ChinaFileChina News, Analysis, Culture, Environment, Mediahttp://www.chinafile.com/
enMon, 30 Mar 2015 23:02:42 -0400Tue, 31 Mar 2015 16:09:57 -0400A Chinese Perspective on the #RacistRestaurant Scandal in Kenyahttp://www.chinafile.com/node/14491
<p>The Chinese restaurant in Nairobi that barred Africans after 5pm sparked a frenzied week of news coverage on both local and international media and, of course, on Twitter. The actions of this small, inconsequential restaurant seemingly took on much broader significance based on the tone and sheer quantity of the news coverage.</p>
<p>The story of an arrogant, racist Chinese immigrant fit perfectly within a negative caricature that has been simmering across many parts of Africa as the breadth and depth of China’s engagement on the continent continues to expand. Nonetheless, amid the media outcry, few, if any Chinese voices were featured to provide critical context and understanding to what is a far more complicated story than what has been portrayed both in the traditional media’s coverage and on social media.</p>
<p>This week, Cobus speaks with Huang Hongxiang, founder of the Nairobi-based community group China House Kenya, about the ongoing scandal and what may have prompted the restaurant owner to enact his “No Africans After 5pm” policy and why it may have less to do with race than most people think.<span class="cube"></span></p>
<h3>Recommendations</h3>
<ul><li>“<a href="http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-03-24/no-africans-policy-chinese-restaurant-kenya-prompts-arrest-outrage" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">‘No Africans’ Policy at Chinese Restaurant in Kenya Prompts Arrest, Outrage</a>,” Matthew Bell, PRI’s <em>The World</em>, March 24, 2015</li>
<li>“<a href="http://mgafrica.com/article/2015-03-25-beijings-africa-problem-no-blacks-chinese-restaurant-shut-down-in-kenya/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Beijing’s Africa Problem: ‘No Blacks’ Chinese Restaurant Shut Down in Kenya</a>,” <em>Mail & Guardian Africa</em>, March 25, 2015</li>
</ul>Monday, March 30, 2015 - 11:02pmChinaFilePlan for Next Five Years Must Free Up Disposable Incomehttp://www.chinafile.com/node/14521
<p>The government's 12th Five-Year Plan concludes this year, and work on drafting the 13th will begin soon.</p>
<p>Which way will China turn? In its work report to legislators at the National People's Congress meeting in March, the government pledged to create a development blueprint in the spirit of reform and innovation, yet grounded in facts. The actual drafting is expected to begin in early summer, with a version ready for review by the Central Committee at its Fifth Plenum in the autumn.</p>
<p>The highlight of the blueprint, which will chart the country's development from 2016 to 2020, will no doubt be the leadership's strategy to stabilize economic growth and, in particular, boost domestic consumption, widely seen as the next major engine of growth.</p>
<p>For nearly two decades, the government has sought to transform the country's growth model from one based on intensive investment to one focused on raising productivity and efficiency. Many experts have also called for a greater reliance on the services industries and consumption for growth. But such ambitions have proved hard to realize; in 2012, the share of household consumption in fact dropped, to 29 percent of GDP. Coupled with a high investment-GDP ratio, such growth is unsustainable.</p>
<p>The downward pressures on the economy are growing. The ostensible reason is a decline in investment, but the true reason is weak domestic demand, since as much as two-thirds of all investments support consumption.</p>
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<h3><a href="/reporting-opinion/caixin-media" rel="nofollow">Caixin Media</a></h3>
<p> <span class="date">10.21.14</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon4.gif" /></span></p></div>
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<h2><a href="/reporting-opinion/caixin-media/revision-securities-law-chance-liberalize-market" rel="nofollow">Revision of Securities Law Is Chance to Liberalize Market</a></h2>
<p> <span class="authors"><a href="/reporting-opinion/caixin-media/revision-securities-law-chance-liberalize-market" rel="nofollow"></a></span><br /></p><div class="inner-content">
<p>China's securities law is to undergo a comprehensive revision almost a decade after the last major overhaul. Public consultation is due to start in the first half of next year, following recent comments from officials, scholars, and market participants.The first national law...</p>
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<p>By contrast, savings are high. Total savings reached 50 percent of GDP by 2007 and have yet to drop. These days, when the economy is slowing from its breakneck pace, there is an urgent need to strengthen consumption and lower the savings rate.</p>
<p>How do we explain such high savings rates? Various reasons have been offered: people save up because of inadequate social security; they need a lump sum for housing down payments, given the rudimentary mortgage financing available; the workforce population is huge relative to other countries, and people who work save more; state-owned enterprises tend to save rather than invest; Chinese save because of the traditional virtue of thrift.</p>
<p>In reality, a combination of these factors is at play. This means any solution must be comprehensive.</p>
<p>One thing is clear: to boost local demand, we must raise household disposable income. This means raising the share of household income in total national income, which in turn requires a comprehensive reform of the administration to make things simpler and less restrictive.</p>
<p>In October, the State Council proposed promoting consumption in six sectors: information technology services, such as e-commerce; green industries; stable and low-income housing; travel and leisure industries; education and sports industries; and industries that support healthy aging such as elderly care services.</p>
<p>Most of these industries are in the services sector. For many of them, demand has already outstripped supply. To increase supply, in many cases, the government must ease the administrative bottlenecks blocking development.</p>
<p>Take education. Last year, some 460,000 Chinese left the country for overseas studies<span>—</span>yet another record<span>—</span>and those who left are younger than before. The local education sectors should see this as a pool of demand waiting to be tapped.</p>
<p>In health care, an overhaul is needed to address the twin problems of lack of access and high costs.</p>
<p>In financial services, though the value-added ratio of the industry has already reached 7 percent of GDP, similar to that in the United States, China is still lagging in terms of product design, pricing and risk protection, not to mention its inadequate regulatory oversight.</p>
<p>Overall, there also needs to be a mindset change. Many Chinese regard services, especially those in the lifestyle businesses, as less viable than those more directly related to manufacturing. This bias must be corrected if the services sector is to grow.</p>
<p>Consumption patterns are also changing. With the rise in income and the popularization of mobile electronic devices, consumption has become more diversified. Many have observed that in today's China the consumption habits of the middle class will inevitably be shaped by the choices of high-income groups. Likewise, those in the low-income strata may also look to the consumption trends of the middle class. As such, society must begin to get used to a more conspicuous display of wealth by the rich, and learn to manage the envy that comes with it. If it does not, the wealthy will simply choose to spend their money abroad.</p>
<p>Every Spring Festival, Chinese with means travel abroad for shopping and leisure. This is no longer news. If the government is serious about boosting domestic consumption, it must consider ways to encourage its citizens to spend their money without any worry. <span class="cube"></span></p>
Monday, March 30, 2015 - 2:58pmChinaFileComfort Women and the Struggle for Reparationshttp://www.chinafile.com/node/14496
<p>Kaiser talks with Lucy Hornby, China correspondent for the <em>Financial Times</em> and author of a <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/b44ae604-cdc1-11e4-8760-00144feab7de.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">recent piece</a> on China’s last surviving Chinese comfort women and their longstanding and often futile attempt to seek reparations in both China and Japan.</p>
<p>Also, other stories of reparations and post-war politics that may leave you—like us—somewhat less cynical going out than coming in.<span class="cube"></span></p>
Monday, March 30, 2015 - 11:34amChinaFileWho Knew? Madagascar Has Africa’s Third Largest Chinese Populationhttp://www.chinafile.com/node/14031
<p>The Chinese population on the east African island of Madagascar defies many of the poorly-informed, albeit widely-held, stereotypes about Chinese migrants on the rest of the continent. First, the community in Madagascar isn't small or isolated. In fact, the Chinese population on the island has grown five-fold over the past decade to an estimated 100,000 people, making it the third-largest Chinese community in all of Africa.</p>
<p>While many Chinese immigrants in the rest of Africa are new to the region, that is not the case in Madagascar. The first wave of Chinese migration to the island dates back to the early 1800s. Whereas Chinese migrants elsewhere in Africa are often viewed quite poorly by the local population, in Madagascar the older generation of Chinese migrants is regarded as among the most popular of the island’s various ethnic minorities.</p>
<p>Beijing-based Sino-Malagasy expert Cornelia Tremann joins Eric and Cobus to discuss one of the most fascinating Chinese engagements anywhere in Africa.{chop}</p>
<h3>Recommendations</h3>
<ul><li>“<a href="http://www.african-review.com/Vol.%205%20%281%29/Tremann.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Temporary Chinese Migration to Madagascar: Local Perceptions, Economic Impacts, and Human Capital Flows</a>,” Cornelia Tremann, <em>African Review of Economics and Finance</em>, December 2013</li>
</ul>Thursday, March 26, 2015 - 11:35pmChinaFileChina Court to Hear NGO Lawsuit Targeting Polluter’s Profitshttp://www.chinafile.com/node/14396
<p>An environmental group has filed a lawsuit for 30 million yuan (U.S.$4.8 million) to seek compensation from a Shandong chemical company for pumping out harmful substances—a legal action thought to be the first public interest litigation for air pollution under <a href="https://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/6938-The-three-year-battle-for-China-s-new-environmental-law" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> China’s new environmental law</a>.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, the Intermediate People’s Court in the Shandong city of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dezhou" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Dezhou</a> agreed to hear a lawsuit requesting compensation for air pollution from Dezhou Jinghua, which makes chemicals for use in the glass industry.</p>
<p>Victims of the smog that plagues many industrialized parts of China are unable to sue those responsible, due to the difficulty of calculating the amount of financial damages from air pollution.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.acef.com.cn/en/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">All-China Environmental Federation</a> (ACEF), which brought the lawsuit, is basing the potential amount of damages on the offending company’s operating costs, in the hope this will provide a route to successful public interest litigation.</p>
<p>Ma Yong, deputy head of ACEF’s Environmental Legal Services Center, explained that such cases are indeed rare, due to difficulties in gathering evidence and assessing damages.</p>
<p>“Companies such as this, which refuse to change despite repeated warnings, can only be dealt with through the courts,” Ma said.</p>
<p>If awarded, the compensation would be paid to the Dezhou city government and earmarked for dealing with air pollution.</p>
<h3>First Public Interest Lawsuit for Air Quality</h3>
<p>Environmental lawyer Liu Jinmei told chinadialogue that this was the first public interest case over air pollution she had heard of.</p>
<p>In February 2014 a resident of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shijiazhuang" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Shijiazhuang</a>, one of China's most polluted cities, tried to sue the environmental authorities because he was unable to identify a particular company responsible for toxic air quality.</p>
<p>This was the first attempt to sue government officials over air pollution in China, and local courts refused to hear the case.</p>
<p>ACEF deputy head Ma said an ACEF investigation found that Dezhou Jinghua had been releasing pollutants for a long time, including <a href="http://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/air-pollution/effects" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide</a> in quantities far above those permitted.</p>
<p>Ma explained that judicial interpretation of the new public interest litigation law, which came into effect in January, provides guidance on cases where damages are hard to assess. According to that interpretation, when the environmental damages cannot be calculated, damages can be assessed in line with the company’s operating costs.</p>
<h3>May Prove a Model for Future Cases</h3>
<p>Dezhou Jinghua has saved over 20 million yuan by not installing environmental-protection equipment on a number of production lines, and had also avoided fines that should have been paid for pollution, Ma said.</p>
<p>Hu Jing, a deputy professor at the <a href="http://www.cupl.edu.cn/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">China University of Politics and Law’s</a> Environment and Resources Law Institute, told the <em>Beijing News</em> that it is very hard to use scientific models to assess the harm caused by air pollution and smog.</p>
<p>However, calculating damages in terms of the operating costs companies have saved by ignoring pollution controls would allow public interest cases to be heard in court and for those who break the law to be punished.</p>
<p>ACEF’s case against Dezhou Jinghua may provide a model for public interest cases filed in response to air pollution, Hu adds.</p>
<p>Lawyers that are filing the lawsuit will request that the court orders the defendant to immediately halt breaches of air pollution standards, install more equipment to treat pollution, publish an apology in provincial media, and to pay court, assessment, and legal costs.</p>
<p>According to a report in <em>Beijing News</em>, the company has repeatedly been punished over breaches of pollution law, and was once named and shamed by the Ministry of Environmental Protection during a crackdown prompted by an APEC meeting in Beijing.</p>
<p>An official with the company’s safety and compliance office said that the company is making the required changes, but that these are not complete.</p>
<p>Last year the company invested almost 30 million yuan (U.S.$4.8 million) installing dust and sulphur scrubbers, and adding nitrogen oxide scrubbers would cost a further 20 million yuan.</p>
<h3>More Litigation Expected This Year</h3>
<p>Ma told chinadialogue that ACEF already has brought three public interest environmental cases this year. On January 13, two were submitted to the Intermediate People’s Court in Dongying, Shandong, with the local environmental protection bureau permitted to support the case.</p>
<p>Yang Xiumei, head of the Dongying Intermediate People’s Court, told the <em>Legal Daily</em> that these two cases are the first in which the environmental authorities have supported a case since the implementation of the new environmental protection law.</p>
<p>Ma added that the new environmental protection law, and a judicial interpretation from the Supreme People’s Court on handling of environmental public interest lawsuits, had changed the outlook for such litigation. In 2013 the ACEF submitted eight cases, and not one was accepted by the courts.</p>
<p>Another eight were brought in 2014, of which six were accepted. “With the new environmental protection law we’ll be bringing more cases this year, with more help from the environmental authorities,” Ma said.</p>
<p>On January 1, the day the new law came into effect, environmental NGOs Friends of Nature and Fujian Green Home brought the first public interest case under the new law, a case nicknamed the “<a href="https://www.chinadialogue.net/blog/7643-China-s-polluters-hit-with-biggest-ever-fines/en" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Nanping Environmental Destruction Case</a>.”</p>
<p>Zhang Boju, Secretary General of Friends of Nature, told the media that while NGOs hoped to help implement the new system, they lack funding and support.</p>
<p>Friends of Nature set up a fund for those bringing such cases, with support from the Alibaba Foundation.</p>
<p>Zhang added that due to financial limitations, the fund was currently focusing on help with pre-litigation costs.</p>
<p>He went on to say that of the 700 or so environmental groups nationwide able to bring litigation, most that have a government background were not keen to do so.</p>
<p>In all, only a dozen or more civil society groups have both the ability and will to file lawsuits, Zhang said.<span class="cube"></span></p>
Thursday, March 26, 2015 - 2:44pmChinaFileBrother, Can You Spare a Renminbi?http://www.chinafile.com/node/14416
<p>Who deserves to be poor in modern China? One man in China’s southern Zhejiang province certainly seemed sympathetic: Each day, he pushed himself along the street on a homemade wooden skateboard, his apparently paralyzed legs tucked under his body, holding out a can to ask for spare change. But in December 2014, a reporter from Chinese state media agency Xinhua secretly <a href="http://shanghaiist.com/2014/12/08/paralyzed-beggar-stands-up-zhejiang.php" rel="nofollow">photographed</a> the man standing up, tucking away his gear, and hopping on a bus, an incident that quickly spread through the Chinese web and set off online anger at a phenomenon now notorious in China: fake beggars. The same month, state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) <a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2014-12/07/content_19039093.htm" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">reported</a> that police had busted a professional begging racket in the southwestern city of Chongqing; its members owned expensive watches and high-end mobile phones. On March 2, state-run China Net <a href="http://china.org.cn/china/2015-03/02/content_34929241.htm" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">reported</a> that police had busted a “beggar millionaire” who made so much money pretending to be crippled that he had purchased two apartments in Beijing.</p>
<p>Has China suddenly become a nation of (admittedly entrepreneurial) scammers? It’s not entirely clear whether fake begging is relatively new or is a long-standing trend that social media has made easier to detect. But there’s no debate that since China’s economic reforms began in 1978, the Community Party has dismantled much of the country’s welfare system, leaving only a thin social safety net for the urban poor. Relaxed domestic travel restrictions have unleashed a flood of rural migrants to the cities, while swift but uneven economic development has left China with a wealth <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-04-28/gap-between-rich-poor-worse-in-china-than-in-u-s-study-shows" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">disparity</a> among the widest in the world. That means there are many in truly desperate straits, but there’s also more money sloshing about for those with the chutzpah to feign poverty. The question is how many have truly falsified their beggar status and how many have been erroneously held out as exemplars of the practice—fake fake beggars, in other words.</p>
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<h3><a href="/multimedia/infographics" rel="nofollow">Infographics</a></h3>
<p> <span class="date">11.20.14</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon4.gif" /></span></p></div>
<div class="cb-link"><a href="/multimedia/infographics/who-really-benefits-poverty-alleviation-china" rel="nofollow"></a></div>
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<h2><a href="/multimedia/infographics/who-really-benefits-poverty-alleviation-china" rel="nofollow">Who Really Benefits from Poverty Alleviation in China?</a></h2>
<p> <span class="authors"><a href="/multimedia/infographics/who-really-benefits-poverty-alleviation-china" rel="nofollow"></a></span><br /></p><div class="inner-content">
<p>A series of reports issued by China's National Audit Office highlights problems in 19 counties that have received funding from national poverty alleviation programs. News of "impoverished counties’" constructing luxurious new government buildings or being ranked...</p>
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<p>The chatter surrounding the new phenomenon might sound familiar to Americans reared on outlets like Fox News that bemoan the sloths, shills, and other ranks of shameless who plead poverty while (allegedly) living the rich life. But in China, where 40 years ago nearly everyone lived in poverty, the debate is new. “In the modern era, begging is no longer a pitiable, desperate, involuntary, and unfamiliar behavior,” wrote one user in an online <a href="http://www.zhihu.com/question/20212769" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">forum</a> generally unsympathetic to those asking for money on the street. “It’s a high-income industry that requires essentially zero investment to get started.” Panhandlers make so much profit, wrote another user, that “many aren’t even willing to go to rescue shelters.” Another <a href="http://www.zhihu.com/question/28645336" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">blamed</a> the good-hearted people who give handouts. “If no one ever gave money,” wrote the user, “people wouldn’t blast music and walk through subway cars”—a common method of begging in China—“and they wouldn’t stand at street corners in all kinds of weather holding signs, slowing down traffic.”</p>
<p>Online debate has thus far elided the distinction between the fake poor and what some Westerners might call the “deserving poor.” In a March 20 <a href="http://www.zhihu.com/question/28645336" rel="nofollow">forum</a> on popular question-and-answer site Zhihu called “how to differentiate real beggars from fakes,” a common piece of advice was to offer a beggar something besides cash. If the beggar accepted, then the person was genuinely in need—but if the beggar rejected it, the con was on. Another user advised passers-by to offer to escort beggars to the nearest shelter; if they refused to go, then they too should not be trusted. Still another wrote that the only beggars she gives money to are children, the elderly, and the disabled. “If they are youthful, with hands and feet,” wrote the <a href="http://www.zhihu.com/people/veraven" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">user</a>, “I don’t give them a penny.”</p>
<p>For its part, Chinese state-run media appears more interested in calling out fraud than tackling the larger social issues at play, which might tend to point the finger at government authorities. State-run <em>China Daily</em> <a href="http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2013-06/03/content_16561883.htm" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">reported</a> in June 2013 that in the southern provincial capital of Nanjing, 80 percent of those begging in the city’s subways were fake, meaning they were capable of work and did not come from poor homes. This narrow definition does not take into account any of the many extenuating circumstances that may prevent a physically whole person from obtaining employment. The report lamented that some beggars “may have a monthly income of up to $1600,” more than three times the average monthly per capita income of Nanjing residents.</p>
<p>Critiques of fake begging are likely to find a ready audience in China, where the philanthropic sector is still nascent. One reason for this is a social media kerfuffle that’s four years old but still having an impact: In 2011, the Red Cross Society of China (RCSC), China’s largest charity, became <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/07/06/china.redcross/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">mired</a> in scandal after Guo Meimei, a woman falsely claiming to be a Red Cross employee, posted pictures of herself online posing with a Maserati and bragging about her luxurious lifestyle. Suspicions swirled about where Guo had gotten the money and how RCSC handled the donations it received. The scandal cast a shadow over the whole country’s charitable sector; that year, donations <a href="http://www.mca.gov.cn/article/zwgk/gzdt/201206/20120600327110.shtml" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">plummeted</a> to $13.6 billion from the 2010 peak of $16.6 billion, and the country has yet to recover to pre-2011 levels, which were never high to begin with. Chinese philanthropy is especially anemic when compared with that of the United States: According to a government-issued 2013 report, China <a href="http://www.charity.gov.cn/fsm/sites/newmain/preview1.jsp?ColumnID=362&TID=20140921151648731158160" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">registered</a> $15.9 billion in charitable donations, a mere 4.7 percent of all U.S. <a href="http://www.philanthropy.iupui.edu/news/article/giving-usa-2014" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">donations</a> that same year. And according to the World Giving Index 2014 <a href="https://www.cafonline.org/pdf/CAF_WGI2014_Report_1555AWEBFinal.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">report</a>, published by U.K.-based nonprofit Charities Aid Foundation, only 13 percent of China’s adult population donated to charity over a one-month period in 2013, compared with 68 percent of the U.S. adult population.</p>
<p>To be sure, Chinese charity does have a future. In early 2014, Jack Ma, founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba and China’s richest man, <a href="http://qz.com/269899/what-jack-ma-plans-to-do-with-his-alibaba-billions/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">established</a> a charitable trust worth $3 billion aimed at combating the country’s massive pollution. Zhang Xin, a real estate tycoon who recently established a $15 million fund to send poor Chinese students to Harvard University, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/opinion/zhang-xin-the-rise-of-the-chinese-philanthropist.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">wrote</a> in December 2014 for <em>The New York Times</em> that China is “on the cusp of change” as a new, prosperous generation of Chinese look to give back to the society that has afforded them so many opportunities. And while many in China may have qualms about personally helping out beggars, those who do are often admired. A March 20 <a href="http://weibo.com/2803301701/C9stuyRuw%3Ftype=comment%26sudaref=passport.weibo.com%23_rnd1426877154994" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">post</a> by Communist Party mouthpiece <em>People’s Daily</em> on its Weibo account told the story of a young woman eating in a porridge restaurant who had shared her breakfast with a beggar, after the old woman had approached her and said simply, “I’m hungry.” The post garnered more than 7,900 likes and 1,000 admiring comments.</p>
<p>But in a country of growing wealth and inequality, poverty and its solutions are rarely so black and white. One Zhihu user, a young college graduate living in Shanghai, <a href="http://www.zhihu.com/question/28645336" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">wrote</a> that he had recently come upon a ragged young woman with a baby, begging outside a busy Shanghai train station. “My first thought,” he wrote, was to wonder why she had chosen to give birth to a baby that she wasn’t able to support. But then he chided himself for judging her so quickly. “How difficult it must be,” he wrote, “for a [single] woman with a baby to find a job in Shanghai.” The young woman’s predicament, and his own reaction, troubled him, and he described it as “two small people in my head fighting each other.” In the end, he fished out some small bills from his pocket and gave them to her. “There are some problems,” he concluded, “that just aren’t that easy to figure out.” The start, perhaps, of a First World problem.<span class="cube"></span></p>
Thursday, March 26, 2015 - 11:48amChinaFileWas Lee Kuan Yew an Inspiration or a Race Traitor? Chinese Can’t Agreehttp://www.chinafile.com/node/14376
<p>When Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of Singapore, <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/22/lee-kuan-yew-singapore/">passed away</a> at the ripe age of 91 on March 23, the elderly statesman was as controversial in death as in life—and nowhere was the debate more vigorous than in China. While state media was full of praise, with government-owned China Central Television (CCTV) <a href="http://news.cntv.cn/special/lgybs/index.shtml">running</a> tributes on loop during the day, <a href="http://news.cntv.cn/2015/03/23/ARTI1427064514836160.shtml">calling</a> Lee’s governance of Singapore a “miracle” and <a href="http://shanghaiist.com/2015/03/23/xi-jinping-lee-kuan-yew-old-friend-china.php">burnishing</a> his credentials as an “old friend of the Chinese people.” But the Chinese blogosphere, which often provides a counterpoint to the official line, was not so sure. For many ordinary Chinese netizens, Lee was a paradox that defied easy categorization. An ethnic Chinese proud of his heritage, Lee also had a thoroughly British education and forced his people to learn English; an unapologetic pragmatist with an authoritarian bent, Lee also emphasized rule of law and clean government; an oracle of China’s astronomical rise on the world stage, Lee also <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/in-china-and-west-contrasting-views-on-legacy-of-singapores-patriarch/2015/03/23/6b285de1-9e39-45de-ae15-1ef95c80792f_story.html">called</a> for more U.S. involvement in Asia to guard against a rising China.</p><p>China and Singapore have had a close, but at-times awkward, bilateral relationship since Lee first <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2015/03/23/how-old-friend-lee-kuan-yew-influenced-china/">visited</a> China during the last years of late Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong’s reign. Lee was a <a href="http://www.voanews.com/content/former-singapore-pm-lee-kuan-yew-dies/2690536.html">sworn enemy</a> of communists in his own country in the 1950’s and 1960’s, and Beijing had <a href="https://books.google.com.hk/books?id=zy0LrHD51qwC&pg=PA51&lpg=PA51&dq=lee+kuan+yew+%22running+dog%22&source=bl&ots=RB5LQqwABv&sig=OdEGI6ax5v5OGwDHZ-ynFOYpJdg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=aCcQVeaDHsqk8AXD7oKwCA&ved=0CDAQ6AEwBw">branded</a> him a “running dog” of the West. But in 1978, Deng Xiaoping, then on the verge of becoming China’s paramount leader, went to Singapore and was apparently impressed with the city-state’s fast development and fastidious management under one-party rule. The pragmatic Lee <a href="http://sghardtruth.com/2011/11/14/lee-kuan-yew-and-deng-xiaoping-had-special-bond/">developed</a> a rapport with the equally pragmatic Deng. Soon after China embarked on its economic reforms in 1979, the Communist Party began to <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2015/03/23/how-old-friend-lee-kuan-yew-influenced-china/">send</a> Chinese officials to Singapore on a regular basis to learn from its experience, and when China started to allow its citizens to travel for leisure in the 2000’s, Singapore was among their first destinations, leaving visitors to marvel at its clean streets and high living standards.</p><p>{article, 5092}</p><p>As a result, many Chinese, from high officials to ordinary people, find much to <a href="http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/23/in-lee-kuan-yew-china-saw-a-leader-to-emulate/">emulate</a> from Lee’s Singapore. But there’s disagreement about what China needs to learn from Singapore, and why. Under current President Xi Jinping, the Chinese central government is gravitating towards a Singaporean model that combines a free-market economy with one-party rule. In the wake of Lee’s death, <em>Global Times</em>, a state-owned newspaper, <a href="http://world.huanqiu.com/weinxingonghao/2015-03/5989237.html" target="_blank">identified</a> four watchwords of Lee’s legacy—“stability, orderliness, lack of graft, and rule of law”—that could also easily describe Xi’s domestic agenda.</p><p>But more liberal-minded Chinese, like lawyer Tao Jingzhou, <a href="http://weibo.com/2648404715/C9QJ0gnzy">believed</a> that the secret ingredient to Singapore’s success was Lee’s Western outlook and a legal system bequeathed by British colonists. Columnist Liu Shengjun <a href="http://weibo.com/1889213710/C9Tls6xeA">wrote</a> that Singapore’s stability and efficiency are built on “Lee’s authoritarian charisma,” which has limited appeal in China’s consensus-driven government.</p><p>Then there are Chinese vocal nationalists and leftists, who have offered much harsher post-mortem assessments of Lee. Since he was an embodiment of state-led capitalism that many Chinese leftists despise, some nationalists and Maoists condemned Lee’s legacy and <a href="https://freeweibo.com/weibo/3822575392467655">attacked</a> China’s state-owned media, including CCTV, for their flowery tributes. Vindictive essays detailing Lee’s offenses against communists <a href="http://weibo.com/3711245795/C9TfPFDoZ">circulated</a> on Chinese social media among leftist circles after his death, calling him a “fascist pawn of imperialism.” Since more than 74 percent of Singaporeans are <a href="http://www.yoursingapore.com/content/traveller/en/browse/aboutsingapore/people-lang-culture.html">ethnic Chinese</a>, including Lee and most of its senior leadership, some Chinese tend to think of Singapore as a nation of long-lost cousins that should, one way or another, <a href="http://bbs.tianya.cn/post-worldlook-1422322-1.shtml">rotate</a> close within China’s orbit. Hardcore Chinese nationalists loathe the idea that Lee instead vouchsafed Singapore’s own national interests, which sometimes <a href="http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/a-look-back-at-mr-lee/1734300.html">brought</a> the country closer to the United States than to China.</p><p>Lu Qi, a nationalist scholar, took the vitriol a step further when he <a href="http://weibo.com/1655746665/C9ttIcuCc">called</a> Lee a <em>hanjian</em>—that is, a traitor to the Chinese nation—because Lee “embarked on a large de-Sinicization campaign in Singapore, and most ethnic Chinese Singaporeans could not speak Chinese.” Guo Songmin, a former magazine editor, <a href="http://weibo.com/1065618283/C9UvHsWIr">accused</a> Lee of turning Singapore into a republic of “bananas,” another pejorative used against Asians who have adopted Western culture because they are “yellow on the outside and white on the inside,” and wrote that Lee “infected overseas Chinese everywhere with cultural schizophrenia.” Other nationalists have <a href="http://weibo.com/3585327622/C9TTEvaAs">called</a> Lee an “opportunist” that “milked both China and the U.S. for his own interests.”</p><p>At the end of the day, whether his personal politics was aligned with China’s is beside the point; Lee’s <a href="http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/49691/fareed-zakaria/a-conversation-with-lee-kuan-yew">brand</a> of “soft authoritarianism” is undoubtedly attractive to Chinese leaders. Beijing wants to keep down dissent and rein in the media, just as Lee did, while expanding the economy and lifting standards of living, which on a per capita basis still rate far below Singapore’s dizzying statistics. On March 23, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs <a href="https://hk.news.yahoo.com/%E5%A4%96%E4%BA%A4%E9%83%A8%E7%A8%B1%E9%A0%98%E5%B0%8E%E4%BA%BA%E5%B0%87%E5%87%BA%E5%B8%AD%E6%9D%8E%E5%85%89%E8%80%80%E8%91%AC%E7%A6%AE-090800679.html">announced</a> that Chinese leaders, likely including President Xi Jinping, would travel to Singapore for Lee’s funeral. Singaporeans, particularly the younger generation, might <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2011/05/24/leekuanyew-istan-forever/" target="_blank">have grown</a> much more ambivalent about Lee’s paternalistic approach to governance and resent the lack of freedom of expression that characterizes their daily lives. But those remain precisely the methods that China’s leadership is most eager to learn and master.{chop}</p>Wednesday, March 25, 2015 - 12:50pmChinaFileWhat Went Wrong With U.S. Strategy on China’s New Bank and What Should Washington Do Now?http://www.chinafile.com/node/14311
<p>Now that much of Europe has announced its intentions to join the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), was Washington’s initial opposition a mistake? Assuming the AIIB does get off the ground, what might it mean for future competition between the world’s two largest economies in the arena of global development finance and, by extension, in the realm of soft power? <em>— The Editors</em></p>
Tuesday, March 24, 2015 - 11:41amChinaFileKissinger: China, U.S. Must ‘Lead in Cooperation’http://www.chinafile.com/node/14246
<p>Henry Kissinger, the former U.S. Secretary of State and the architect of former president Richard Nixon's historic visit to China in 1972, has continued to influence the shaping of the two countries' relations and America's foreign policy long after leaving office.</p>
<p>On a recent trip to China, the 92-year-old Kissinger met with President Xi Jinping in his capacity as chairman of Kissinger Associates Inc., a consulting firm in New York. In September, Xi will make a trip of his own after accepting an earlier invitation from U.S. President Barack Obama to head to Washington for a state visit—the first of its kind since he became president in 2013.</p>
<p>The upcoming meeting of the two leaders will give the U.S. government an opportunity to hear from the Chinese leadership about the country's sweeping reforms and its development, Kissinger told Caixin in an exclusive interview on March 18, one day after talking with Xi.</p>
<p>"I'm very confident President Xi, when he comes to the United States, will present a picture of what is going on in China that will be very significant," he said.</p>
<p>Kissinger said China is bound to rise despite some down periods, and its influence will make the United States feel uneasy in certain regards. However, it is very important that the world's two biggest powers "lead in cooperation," as they did in <a href="http://english.caixin.com/2014-11-25/100755449.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">a recent agreement on climate change</a>, he said.</p>
<p>The United States' former top diplomat also said both countries should "remember that whatever their differences, their common interests are greater." He also talked about a wide range of other issues, including Russia and the crisis in Ukraine, landscape-changing events occurring in the Middle East, and how diplomacy should work in an age where it is harder to keep secrets.</p>
<p>The following are excerpts from his interview.</p>
<p><strong>Caixin: In your book The World Order you mentioned that the United States and China can learn a lesson from World War I. What is that lesson?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Henry Kissinger:</strong> The lesson is that countries can be drawn into a conflict by doing things that look perfectly reasonable on a day-to-day basis and then suddenly find themselves in a position where they don't know how to extricate themselves. I believe that none of the leaders who started the first world war would have done so had they known what the end would look like. So China and the United States have to be careful not to get into situations where even if they act reasonable, they create tension that, over a period of time, will be difficult to manage.</p>
<p>Both should remember that whatever their differences, their common interests are greater. So when issues arise, they should deal with it by compromise and without pressure. They should be settled on the basis of remembering that the need for peace is greater than the immediate tension.</p>
<p><strong>Your book also says that "concepts of partnership need to become, paradoxically, elements of the modern balance of power." Why is this paradox necessary? What should both countries' leaders do to manage the paradox?</strong></p>
<p>It's understandable that China wants to keep foreigners from approaching its borders and it therefore undertakes a defense effort to that end. I particularly understand it in light of China's history. It's also understandable that the United States doesn't want any region dominated by a superpower, so that creates a certain balance. On the other hand, the two elements in that balance, namely, China and the United States, also have to lead in cooperation, as has been shown in the agreement on climate change. I'm sure that President Xi's forthcoming visit to the United States will lead to other positive understandings, so both of these tendencies have to go on side by side.</p>
<p><strong>What trajectory do you think China might follow in rising to become a strong power?</strong></p>
<p>Historically, a rise has always had some ups and downs. I remember China in 1971, and if anyone had shown me a picture of what Beijing looks like and said in 25 years Beijing will look like this, I would have said that's absolutely impossible. But up to now the rise of China has been, to all purposes, uninterrupted. That has never happened before for such a long period of time. It's possible there are some down periods, but when one looks at the evolution of China in the last 30 to 40 years, I think the long-term trend will be upward, and especially will be so if the reforms that are now being undertaken are carried through.</p>
<p><strong>China has been seeking greater influence in the current global financial order and has been leading efforts to create some new institutions that may potentially rival the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. What is the strategic implication of these moves?</strong></p>
<p>It is not clear yet. There's a dialogue going on between the United States and other countries and China. Some people in the United States have interpreted it as an attempt to create an alternative financial system to the existing financial system, and maybe ultimately, to replace it. I'd say, let history decide. There is a need for development and there's a need for capital for development. There must be a way of dividing the responsibilities in institutions and we will see what happens later. I don't think any country can create an international system by itself and I'm sure Chinese leaders realize that.</p>
<p><strong>Is it possible that the U.S. government has felt strategically threatened by the recent attempt by a Chinese businessman to build a canal across Nicaragua?</strong></p>
<p>There are a lot of people that say whenever China does something in Africa or Latin America, it's damaging to us. Why should a canal from the Atlantic to the Pacific be damaging to the United States? The relationship of China to the United States will be determined by the purposes of the leaders and the ability of the leaders to deal with each other. We ought to understand, both of us, we are now great countries, we will both operate around the world. We will be in some places side by side, some places not side by side. I don't think that is the issue, and if China wants to spend resources on building a canal in Nicaragua and doesn't make it a naval base, which is inconceivable, why should that concern me?</p>
<p><strong>Is there another triangular game on display again between China, Russia, and the United States?</strong></p>
<p>In the evolution of China, Russia, and the United States, when I was in office, our theory was we would have good relations with both countries and we would not choose. We made it very clear that we had a strong interest in a peaceful solution between China and Russia. China knew we would oppose a Russian attack on China.</p>
<p>In the present situation there is no particular threat of war between any of the three countries that we are talking about. Russia is undergoing and has created a crisis in Europe and as a result it has moved closer to China. This does not damage the United States and I cannot conceive that China will engage in a formal alliance, so we will have to take the issues as they arise. So far most of the issues concern energy supply and other matters that do not directly affect the United States.</p>
<p><strong>Do you see a cold war emerging from the Ukraine crisis?</strong></p>
<p>I thought a year ago, and I think today, that the Ukraine crisis should be settled peacefully and by negotiations. The basic issue has been whether Ukraine should be part of a military alliance or whether it should belong to a Russian sphere of military influence. My view has been Ukraine should be in neither camp, that it should be a meeting place and not an outpost. If that advice had been taken, I think a peaceful solution would have occurred. I believe that this is what should still be done and the continuation of conflict will weaken every party.</p>
<h3>On President Xi Jinping</h3>
<p>You've known all the Chinese supreme leaders since Mao Zedong. What's your impression of Xi Jinping and how do you assess his foreign policy in terms of strategic change?</p>
<p>President Xi has undertaken an enormous task. He is attempting to and succeeding in transforming a nation of over a billion people and to change patterns that have been established for many generations, to do this at a time when there is also a change of population from the countryside to the cities and when the world economy is becoming more complex. So I think that President Xi will be recorded in history as a leader who's brought about very major changes, some of the most dramatic changes in Chinese history.</p>
<p><strong>What expectations do you have for Xi's upcoming visit to the U.S.?</strong></p>
<p>This will be the first state visit of President Xi to the United States and he's coming in a period when the United States is preparing for an election next year. So it contributes enormously to the continuity of Chinese-American relations, to see that the foreign policy that has already existed for, I think, nine presidential terms, is now being carried on toward the end of the current administration and I'm sure it will be supported in the new administration. Also, Americans have not really had the opportunity to hear an explanation from the top Chinese leaders about the reform program and development of the country. I'm very confident President Xi, when he comes to the United States, will present a picture of what is going on in China that will be very significant.</p>
<h3>On Islamic Conflicts</h3>
<p>How do you view the emergence of the Islamic State? Is it a game-changer?</p>
<p>In the Middle East, we are seeing three or four revolutions going on simultaneously. There is the dissatisfaction with the existing government; there is the religious split between Shia and Sunni; there are the different ethnic groups; and, finally, there is the disintegration of the international system as it was created at the end of World War I, when we are now observing Iranian troops participating in wars inside Iraq and occupying territory in Iraq, something that, 10 years ago, would have produced the gravest international crisis. Now countries are disregarding borders. All these crises are occurring simultaneously and each has a somewhat different origin.</p>
<p><strong>As you said, the Islamic world has now come to a crossroads. Where is it headed?</strong></p>
<p>What the Islamic State represents is a very early expression of Islamic reality, which is that the world is treated as a religious organization and that it is governed by a caliph who is both the religious leader and a secular leader, and that world does not recognize borders. It does not make any distinction between various Islamic countries and it has no difficulty in its mind crossing into Afghanistan, China, Russia, and America. So if this becomes the dominant form of Islamic expression, then the world will have an extremely difficult period and no nation that has any Muslim population will be safe from it until they learn that their methods are unacceptable and not tolerable.</p>
<p>The Islamic State is a symbol of a theocratic world. How it is defeated depends on a number of things. One, how outside countries react, but secondly how the Muslim populations react because they are the ones that are directly affected and in the Middle East. It should not be that difficult to get a grouping of Muslim nations to fight against the group. But it has the additional complication that the Islamic State is a Sunni phenomenon, so if we use Shia forces to defeat it, then we are in a way, making the conflict even more complicated in the long term.</p>
<p><strong>This brings us to the question of the rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia. How do you think the Iranian nuclear issue should be dealt with?</strong></p>
<p>In the administration of President Nixon, we were very friendly with Iran when the shah was there. That was true in previous administrations. If Iran conducts itself as a nation state, with recognized borders, it can make a great contribution to national order and peace. It has its own distinct culture. It is the only country conquered by Islam in the beginning that did not adopt Arabic as a language.</p>
<p>The problem with Iran is when it becomes an imperial power, either in the sense of Shia domination of the world or in the sense of the history of the Persian Empire, which went from even parts of current China across all of North Africa. So that is the challenge that is posed by Iran. The problem is: Can Iran behave like a nation state? If it does, good relations between it and the rest of the world will be almost automatic.</p>
<h3>On Technology</h3>
<p>Your book also mentioned social media. Do you think social media is becoming a force in shaping international politics?</p>
<p>I hate to embarrass myself, but I don't use social media and I don't have the need to tell everyone what I'm doing. But certainly networks have totally changed the world. They have created a degree of interconnection between people that didn't exist, but they have also produced a self-consciousness. When you are so dependent on the approval of other people, how confident are you on your own judgment? That is one of the challenges of our time.</p>
<p><strong>You have been an advocate of quiet diplomacy. How do you think that works today, especially in light of the impact of the Snowden affair, which gives people the impression that everything that can be leaked will be leaked?</strong></p>
<p>There are two levels of quiet diplomacy: keeping your objective secret and, secondly, keeping your conduct a secret. Sometimes it is necessary.</p>
<p>For example, when we accepted the invitation of the Chinese leadership to come, we thought it was best to do it secretly. Because if we had done it publicly, we would have had to give so many assurances and the Chinese would have to explain their purposes. We thought it was best for leaders to meet and come to an understanding of the direction of where they were going to go, and then to publish it. We have published, with the approval of the Chinese, the records of the conversations. But for the moment, for the year, in which we established contact and we didn't know each other, we thought it was best to keep it secret. I still think there are important things that need to be done that way.</p>
<h3>On Lee Kuan Yew</h3>
<p>What's your opinion of Singapore's former prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew?</p>
<p>Lee Kuan Yew is one of the great men of our period. He took a run-down seaport and built a country based on his belief in the intellectual ability of his largely Chinese population. He established a competitive advantage based on the discipline and intelligence of his society. He has acted, in addition, as a conscience all over the world. It is an amazing performance, that a mayor of a middle-sized town has had such an influence around the world. He is a great man and a good friend of mine.</p>
<p><strong>What will a post-Lee Singapore look like?</strong></p>
<p>He has created a modern society. The per capita income when he came in was US$ 600 a year. It is now over US$ 40,000 a year. He has done it with discipline perhaps considered excessive by Western countries, but I think it will gradually evolve into a more participatory country. He is one of the men who have created a society that can continue to grow and we'll continue to be inspired by him. {chop}</p>
Tuesday, March 24, 2015 - 11:04amChinaFileWordplayhttp://www.chinafile.com/node/14226
<p>Way back when, let’s say in 2012, the city of Miami and the country of China rarely mixed in sentences. Since then, connections between the Far East and the northernmost part of Latin America have become more and more frequent. Three years ago, a Hong Kong group started <a href="http://brickellcitycentreconnect.com/construction-cam/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">constructing</a> an entire city center in downtown Miami. Last year, a large exhibition of contemporary Chinese art <a href="http://www.miami.com/03928-chinese039-rubell-family-collection-wynwood-exhibits-best-contemporary-chinese-art-article" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">opened</a> at the Rubell Family Collection. Its opening seemed to coincide with a loud crash from close by. That was the sound of one of Ai Weiwei’s painted vases <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/feb/19/ai-weiwei-vase-miami-art-gallery-video" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">intentionally dropped</a> to the floor by a local artist unhappy at being passed over by the Perez Art Museum of Miami. The stunning newly-opened Herzog and de Meuron museum had been gambling that the infamous Chinese artist (who has <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2014/feb/18/ai-weiwei-han-urn-smash-miami-art" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">destroyed his own share</a> of precious vases) would draw a crowd. The smashed vase did the trick.</p>
<div class="visual-box photo-object grid-2 p- left pull- left">
<div class="visual-image-box"> <img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/scale_photo_inset/public/xu-bing-headshot_0.jpg?itok=dHfsvVGi" alt="" /><br /><p class="img-credit field field-name-field-common-system-credit field-type-text field-label-hidden"> Courtesy of Xu Bing Studio </p>
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<p class="img-caption field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"> Xu Bing </p>
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<p>Now Miami turns to the prodigiously talented Xu Bing, Ai Weiwei’s rival and old friend from the 1990 post-Tiananmen exodus to New York. These days, in the United States at least, Xu sits in Ai’s shade. It’s worth remembering that for many years their relative ranks were reversed. When Xu Bing was accepting a <a href="http://www.macfound.org/fellows/601/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">MacArthur “Genius Grant”</a> in 1999, Ai Weiwei hadn’t even been included in Asia Society’s groundbreaking exhibition of contemporary Chinese art, <a href="http://asiasociety.org/inside-out-new-chinese-art" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">“Inside Out.”</a></p>
<p>The Xu Bing exhibition at the The Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum, which runs through May 24, is both grand and highly selective. It focuses on a handful of Xu’s works, including his “Book from the Sky.” At first glance, Xu Bing seems to be the opposite of Ai Weiwei. While Ai is seen as a political provocateur, Xu Bing expresses no interest in politics at all. While Ai has been jailed, beaten, and interrogated, Xu was invited back to China in 2008 to become Vice President of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. And yet, curiously, Xu Bing’s work can seem as deeply confrontational as Ai Weiwei’s. Perhaps only in China could an avowedly apolitical artist produce such political art.</p>
<p>Xu Bing was born in 1955. His generation would lurch helplessly into the terror of the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/in_depth/china_politics/key_people_events/html/5.stm" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Cultural Revolution</a>. When he was 11 years old, the “Smash the Four Olds” campaign was unleashed against traditional customs, habits, culture, and thinking. Mao had already shackled contemporary art to the ideals of “Socialist Realism,” but suddenly all signs of tradition were supposed to be erased. Memoirs of the time abound with shattered statues, ripped scrolls, and classical music LP’s snapped in half as the nation’s youth were encouraged to erase the past. Under his father’s tutelage Xu Bing was already fascinated by painting and printmaking, but what good was a creative bent, not to mention artistic talent, when only allegiance to the leadership was required?</p>
<p>His father was a professor of history at Peking University, the epicenter of the Cultural Revolution. It was where Mao himself had written the famous <em>dazibao</em>, or Big Character Poster, “Bombard the Headquarters.” It was also where Xu witnessed his father’s public humiliation. After his father was fired and jailed, Xu Bing, alongside tens of thousands of other Beijing youth, was “<a href="http://chineseposters.net/themes/up-to-the-mountains.php" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">sent down to the countryside</a>” for reeducation.</p>
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<div class="visual-image-box"> <img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/scale_photo_inset/public/art-for-the-people_0.jpg?itok=oDubNoJr" alt="" /><br /><p class="img-credit field field-name-field-common-system-credit field-type-text field-label-hidden"> Courtesy of Xu Bing Studio </p>
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<p class="img-caption field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"> “Square Word Calligraphy: Art for the People” (2002), ink on paper. </p>
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<p>Even in the countryside his talents were noticed. In his own words, he contributed “blindly” to Mao thought, helping to crank out Big Character Posters. Millions were produced in every village, town, and city in China. Some were propaganda, some were protests, and some were denunciations. In Beijing, they were posted everywhere alongside portraits of Mao, covering whole buildings, papering over the past. Xu would later come to the conclusion that Mao and Andy Warhol shared much in common. “If you had the experience of the Culture Revolution in China,” he once <a href="http://www.brooklynrail.org/2007/09/art/xu-bing" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">told</a> <em>The Brooklyn Rail</em>, “you can understand authentic pop culture.” Mao, Xu continued, “actually had a lot of avant-garde ideas.” The <em>dazibao</em> betrayed language. So few words were safe from judgment that those words seemed to lose their meaning as they were repeated endlessly across the nation. The politically suspect, such as Xu Bing’s father, were subjected to hour after hour after hour of interviews. Few could stay within the sanctioned language of the Cultural Revolution. As people were forced to write confessions and self-criticisms, they slipped outside the approved lexicon. Those words and phrases would then be twisted against them.</p>
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<div class="visual-image-box"> <img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/scale_photo_inset/public/xb_bfts8791_045_0.jpg?itok=a_ZHNDDY" alt="" /><br /><p class="img-credit field field-name-field-common-system-credit field-type-text field-label-hidden"> Courtesy of Xu Bing Studio </p>
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<p class="img-caption field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"> “Book from the Sky,” hand-printed books, ceiling and wall scrolls printed from wood letterpress type using false Chinese characters, installed at Elvehjem Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1991. </p>
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<p>How strange it must have been to walk down a familiar street with walls now covered in <em>dazibao</em> and seeing the same safe sentiments repeated again and again. The words didn’t mean anything other than a signal that the writer was committed to the cause, or at least eager to avoid being singled out. When you first see Xu Bing’s extraordinary “Book from the Sky,” you can’t help but pause and think of a teenage Xu’s memories of <em>dazibao</em>. There are words sweeping down from above on banners, rising from the floor in stacks of books, hemming you in between completely covered walls. It’s ethereal and claustrophobic. If you don’t read Chinese, you stare at the waves of pictograms and wonder what they mean. If you do read, you soon realize that they mean nothing at all, at least not on their own. The script consists of around 4,000 invented characters, roughly the number that a Chinese schoolchild learns before being considered literate.</p>
<p>“Book from the Sky” is simultaneously playful and solemn. If you’re lucky enough to see it when there are few others around, you get the sense that you’ve tiptoed into a temple. The human brain wants to understand the surrounding language, to make sense of the characters even after you’re told there’s no sense to be found. Your eyes wander from character to character. You look for familiarity, for repetition. The characters seem to have tops, bottoms, sides—just like real Chinese characters—and yet they mean nothing.</p>
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<div class="visual-image-box"> <img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/scale_photo_inset/public/xu_bing_cultural_animal_0.jpeg?itok=C23fDRcw" alt="" /><br /><p class="img-credit field field-name-field-common-system-credit field-type-text field-label-hidden"> Courtesy of Ethan Cohen Fine Arts </p>
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<p class="img-caption field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"> From “Cultural Animal,” a performance held on July 4, 1998 in New York City. </p>
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<p>The New York gallerist Ethan Cohen, who introduced both Xu Bing and Ai Weiwei to the United States back in the 1980s, calls the piece “an intelligent response to art making in a culture where artists aren’t allowed to speak freely.” Did Xu Bing intend to critique the government? Was this a direct commentary on the constraints of language during the Cultural Revolution? Or was his a grander sentiment on language—life’s safer when words have no meaning?</p>
<p>Personally, I found it impossible not to think of a teenage Xu Bing making Big Character Posters at a time when dogma made language both empty and dangerous, but “Book from the Sky” also reaches back far beyond Mao. The piece asks one of the oldest questions in China posed by Confucius: You can see the heavens (made of words draping down the gallery), you are standing on the earth (the handbound books on the floor), you can even see the edges of the known universe (the museum walls are covered in script), but where do you, as a human being, belong? You’re supposed to find a balance. Is that even possible without a language? Can you find peace within chaos?</p>
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<h3><a href="/reporting-opinion/culture" rel="nofollow">Culture</a></h3>
<p> <span class="date">11.21.12</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon4.gif" /></span></p></div>
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<div class="cb-img"><a href="/new-tower-babel" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/xubing3.jpg?itok=c0AjsJ-v" alt="" /></a></div>
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<h2><a href="/new-tower-babel" rel="nofollow">A New Tower of Babel </a></h2>
<p> <span class="authors"><a href="/new-tower-babel" rel="nofollow">Sheila Melvin</a></span><br /></p><div class="inner-content">
<p>Xu Bing, the renowned Chinese artist whose many laurels include a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award and an appointment as vice president of China’s Central Academy of Fine Arts, has long demonstrated a fascination with the written word.His groundbreaking work, Book from...</p>
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<p>The fact that Xu Bing’s words are hanging in Miami seems particularly apt. It’s a city that was on the frontline of the “English Only” movement as a reaction to a sudden influx of Cuban refugees in 1980. In Miami, sentences frequently begin and end in different languages. You get the feeling that might lead to a particular appreciation of Xu Bing’s “Square Word Calligraphy.” The far room of the exhibition is presented as a classroom, with brush-stands, ink, and brushes that invite the visitor to trace Chinese characters. Only, on closer inspection, they’re not Chinese characters at all. They’re English words, the letters sitting on top of one another so that from a distance you presume they’re pictograms. With a little practice, they’re easy to read, easy to create.</p>
<p>Is one language co-opting another? Is English masquerading as Chinese or is Chinese beginning to shape English? Either way, the piece makes you reconsider both languages. It makes you think of the creation of languages. Why did one people separate words letter by letter from a limited alphabet and why did another people choose pictograms? Xu Bing is still adding to this lexicon over twenty years after creating it. Languages do not sit still and neither do great artists.</p>
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<div class="visual-image-box"> <img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/scale_photo_inset/public/10_square-word-calligraphy_red-line-tracing-book-demonstration.jpg?itok=Q1N5-Q2Q" alt="" /><br /><p class="img-credit field field-name-field-common-system-credit field-type-text field-label-hidden"> Courtesy of Xu Bing Studio </p>
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<p class="img-caption field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"> Top: “An Introduction to Square Word Calligraphy”; bottom: “Square Word Calligraphy Red Line Tracing Book” (both 1996). </p>
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<p>Across the hall, just meters from “Book from the Sky,” is “Book from the Ground.” If “Book from the Sky” is designed to engage and then confuse, “Book from the Ground” is all about an easy universality. If you don’t believe me, bring an eight-year-old with you. There are two computers. As you type words into them, they’re translated into corresponding icons that appear on a large screen before you. The list of icons is ever-growing, tallied and expanded by Xu Bing on his travels. Again, you’re interacting, amazed at how quickly your brain is registering new patterns of language and building full sentences. As an artwork it’s not as fascinating as “Book from the Sky” because it succeeds too easily. That’s a compliment to its creator.</p>
<p>As you walk around the exhibition, it dawns on you that you’re in a monochromatic world. Xu Bing is never far from Chinese artistic traditions. The first and last pieces you’ll encounter are “Suzhou Landscripts” and “Mustard Seed Garden Landscape Scroll” where, once again, Xu Bing is playing in the space between tradition and modernity. From a distance, you’ll see the familiar traditional black and white landscapes. Woods, rivers, houses amidst trees under mountains. But look closely and the trees are made up of the pictograms for trees, you know the building by the river is a distillery because it consists of the characters for liquor or wine and factory.</p>
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<div class="visual-image-box"> <img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/scale_photo_inset/public/xubing_landscript_2003_0.jpg?itok=bTqma_IC" alt="" /><br /><p class="img-credit field field-name-field-common-system-credit field-type-text field-label-hidden"> Courtesy of Xu Bing Studio </p>
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<p class="img-caption field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"> “Landscript 文字写生” (2002), Ink on Nepalese paper, 99 x 172.5 cm, Private Collection, New York. </p>
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<p>High art was always black and white in Imperial China. Color was a needless distraction. Imitation wasn’t frowned upon, it was embraced. The room that contains his “Suzhou Landscripts” is typical Xu Bing. It embraces tradition and then undermines it. It copies only to subvert.</p>
<p>In an email to me, Xu wrote that not so long ago ideas as simple as “harmony with nature” were considered reactionary in China. To even talk about “nature” was considered outdated and weak during such an era of industrialization. But he rescued those ideas in his art and brought them quietly to the fore. “Ancient ideas,” he wrote, can become “avant garde again.” Xu wasn’t reflecting the political present, but projecting change. If that’s not political, I don’t know what is.</p>
<p>As with Chinese calligraphy, the landscapes were supposed to serve a double purpose. Realism was secondary. First, the landscape was supposed to capture both the outer and inner essence of its subject. Then, if the artist was good, the landscape would also reveal the artist’s spirit. In the Frost Museum, Xu Bing is very much on display.<span class="cube"></span></p>
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<div class="visual-image-box"> <img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/scale_photo_inset/public/dsca1232_0.jpg?itok=vn6GoOGj" alt="" /><br /><p class="img-credit field field-name-field-common-system-credit field-type-text field-label-hidden"> Courtesy of Xu Bing Studio </p>
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Monday, March 23, 2015 - 12:54pmChinaFileIn Manchuria: A Village Called Wastelandhttp://www.chinafile.com/node/14251
<p>Kaiser Kuo and David Moser are joined by Michael Meyer, the author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Last-Days-Old-Beijing/dp/0802717500"><em>The Last Days of Old Beijing</em></a> and now <a href="http://www.amazon.com/In-Manchuria-Village-Wasteland-Transformation/dp/1620402866"><em>In Manchuria</em></a>, a part literary travelogue and part journalistic account of three years spent living with family in rural Jilin.</p><p>{vertical_photo_right}</p><p>Starting with stories of crime and punishment on the rural bus network and the ever-delicate question of where rice tastes best, our podcast moves on from the personal towards the broader subject of how Jilin's agricultural economy is transforming in the face of market pressures. And we also talk about the past, about the area's Manchu footprint and its continuing legacy from its period of Japanese occupation, both of which can still be seen as much from the people themselves as well as the monuments and cemeteries they left behind.{chop}</p><p>{node, 12796}</p><p>{node, 13731}</p>Monday, March 23, 2015 - 11:07amChinaFileChina Has Its Own Anti-Vaxxers—Blame the Internethttp://www.chinafile.com/node/14216
<p>While health officials in the United States and parts of Europe wrestle with a growing anti-vaccination, or “anti-vaxxer” movement, China is dealing with a less organized but similarly serious fear of immunizations. Social media reveals traces of vaccination anxiety across the country. On March 9, a man in China’s bustling manufacturing hub of Dongguan close to Hong Kong <a href="http://www.weibo.com/2490654257/C7LuQ9LsO?type=comment#_rnd1426252548523" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">uploaded</a> a photo of his latest immunization record to the popular social media site Weibo. “I just got a domestically produced vaccine for hepatitis B,” he <a href="http://www.weibo.com/2490654257/C7LuQ9LsO?type=comment#_rnd1426252548523" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">wrote</a>. “Now I am a little afraid. Domestic vaccines; are they really okay?” A woman in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, <a href="http://www.weibo.com/1278859785/C4pN0cbSj?type=comment" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">wrote</a> Feb. 15 that many of her friends were so nervous about vaccinations that they were either foregoing or delaying getting shots. She <a href="http://www.weibo.com/1278859785/C4pN0cbSj?type=comment" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">wrote</a>: “They reject vaccines, feel suspicious, feel distrustful.”</p>
<p>Vaccine anxiety in the West has often <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/life/family/2014/01/growing_up_unvaccinated_a_healthy_lifestyle_couldn_t_prevent_many_childhood.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">centered</a> on mistrust of the science: fears that injections could compromise one’s natural immunity or (debunked) <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/102400334" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">theories</a> that the shots can trigger autism. By contrast, Chinese people tend to have faith in foreign-made immunizations, but they worry that domestically produced vaccines are contaminated or substandard. A spate of 17 infant deaths at the end of 2013, initially <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/01/03/china-probes-vaccine-makers-amid-heightened-scrutiny/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">suspected</a> to have links to hepatitis B immunizations—made by several of China’s leading vaccine companies—has heightened concern. A government investigation subsequently blamed pneumonia, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, and other causes for the fatalities, clearing the drug makers. The main company involved, Shenzhen Kangtai Biological Products, was <a href="http://www.ejinsight.com/20140304-shenzhen-kangtai-wins-nod-for-hepatitis-b-vaccine-paper-says/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">given</a>the green light to restart manufacturing its vaccines on Jan. 2, 2014. But the fear lingers. Feeding the worry is a general distrust of government data and state media reports, combined with a lively Internet sphere that acts as an ideal breeding ground for rumors and scares.</p>
<p>Recent research by Chinese health officials confirms social media’s role as an accelerator of anti-vaxxer anxiety. A study led by researchers at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Hangzhou, close to Shanghai, <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X15002352" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">published</a> Feb. 27, found that the crisis focused public attention and “negative sentiment online in China.” While media reports initially kindled worries, the report concludes, social media posts by “important opinion leaders” were also “very influential.” Even after the relevant vaccines had been confirmed safe by the government, people surveyed in 10 provinces showed vaccination rates for hepatitis B dropped 30 percent while other types of vaccinations in the national immunization program had also fallen 15 percent, the paper said. “It is possible that the negative effect will last long after the crisis,” it <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X15002352" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">added</a>.</p>
<p>These sorts of numbers understandably alarm the government. At a Jan. 3, 2014, press conference in Beijing, Wang Huaqing, one of the directors of the state-run National Immunization Program of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, <a href="http://www.chinacdc.cn/jdydc/201401/t20140103_92198.htm" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">told</a> journalists that he was “very worried” about rising doubts over vaccine effectiveness in China and that if the trend continued, the hard-won gains of several generations of Chinese disease prevention could be lost.</p>
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<p>And there is much to be lost. China launched a nationwide vaccination program in 1978 and offers free immunizations against more than 10 diseases, including measles, hepatitis B, diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus. It has drastically reduced incidence of these diseases—but some have made a recent comeback. In 2014, China saw 107,000 people infected with measles, a huge <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/measles-by-the-numbers/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">jump</a> from the 26,883 infected a year earlier in 2013.</p>
<p>Officials say that in addition to rising public concern about vaccinations, China has a problem with bad vaccination statistics, which are hampering efforts to stamp out disease. In a paper <a href="http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2334/15/23" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">published</a> in January 2015 and co-authored by Wang of the National Immunization Program, the government admitted that even though measles immunizations in China were officially said to be above 98 percent for all citizens, concerns had been roused by a survey of an unnamed county that found a reported rate of more than 95 percent for all residents but an actual penetration rate that was much lower. Only 22 percent of the children in that county between the ages of 8 months and 47 months had received a measles vaccination. The report <a href="http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2334/15/23" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">stated</a> that the vaccination rates only captured children who had been registered at clinics, while many children had never been registered, and were therefore never counted. It extrapolated that the problem could be widespread in China. The findings, the report <a href="http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2334/15/23" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">said</a>, “raised our concern that there may be a discrepancy between reported and real … coverage rates.”</p>
<p>In a strange twist, China’s flawed measles coverage data has become ammunition for at least one anti-vaccination advocate in the United States. The prominent anti-vaxxer Sayer Ji wrote in a Sept. 20, 2014, blog <a href="http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/why-china-having-measles-outbreaks-when-99-are-vaccinated-2" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">post</a> that the fact that China has seen a resurgence of measles despite having such high immunization rates shows that vaccination simply doesn’t work. “Clearly the vaccines aren’t as effective as claimed,” Ji writes. But according to the recent government study, China’s problem is that it never had the high coverage rate it’s been claiming in the first place. On both sides of the globe, misinformation isn’t just a symptom of a health crisis—it’s a cause.{chop}</p>
Friday, March 20, 2015 - 4:51pmChinaFileWorld Coal Investments Increasingly Risky, Especially China’shttp://www.chinafile.com/node/14166
<p>The investment case for coal-fired power is looking increasingly unconvincing, but more plants will need to be cancelled if the world is to avoid runaway climate change, a report published on Monday said.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://action.sierraclub.org/site/DocServer/Coal_Tracker_report_final_3-9-15.pdf?docID=17381" rel="nofollow">report</a> which was co-authored by green groups CoalSwarm and the Sierra Club, is the latest salvo being fired against those who finance coal, the fossil fuel blamed most for climate change.</p>
<p>The report said that even though two out of three coal-fired power plants globally are likely to be cancelled—mainly for economic reasons—the remaining one-third will account for nearly all of the greenhouse gases that can be emitted if the world is to stand a reasonable chance of keeping temperature rises within the 2°C limit.</p>
<p>"We’ve seen time and again that coal is a risky and expensive investment for anyone, especially developing countries that are on the front lines of the global energy crisis,” said Sierra Club campaigner John Coequyt.</p>
<p>A recent <a href="http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/sustainable/sustainable-news/nature_fossil_fuels" rel="nofollow">report</a> from University College London found that, globally, in order to prevent climate change of more than 2°C, 82% of coal reserves must be left underground, along with 49% of gas reserves, and 33% of oil reserves.</p>
<p>Increasing pressure to curb pollution from the mining and burning of coal have all combined to undermine the economic case for the fuel, campaigners say, pointing to <a href="https://www.dbresearch.com/servlet/reweb2.ReWEB?rwsite=DBR_INTERNET_EN-PROD" rel="nofollow">falling costs</a> of alternative, and low carbon, energy sources such as wind and solar that will ‘strand’ assets such as mines and highly-polluting power stations.</p>
<h3>China Most Exposed to Stranded Assets in Older Coal Power</h3>
<p>Another report released on March 13 said that Chinese state-owned enterprises are most at risk from tightening environmental regulation as the country’s government promises to deliver on its pledge to curb smog and shut down surplus industrial capacity that burns large amounts of coal.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/research-programmes/stranded-assets/publications.php" rel="nofollow">report</a>, which was prepared by Oxford University’s Smith School, added that older coal-fired power plants would become even less economically viable if governments target antiquated capacity for closure in order to meet carbon targets agreed in any future global climate deal.</p>
<p>And newer capacity is likely to be used less often because of big new additions of low carbon energy to Chinese power grids, points out <a href="http://japanfocus.org/-John_A_-Mathews/4297" rel="nofollow">new research</a> from Australian academics. In India, water shortages could make coal-fired power increasingly untenable, the report adds.</p>
<p>The resources industry and some energy economists <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=CHINA+DIALOGUE+IEA+MCGARRITY" rel="nofollow">say the death of coal is greatly exaggerated</a>, pointing to global population growth and the impact on energy demand, ‘locked in’ power production from the fuel, and the ambitions of many developing countries to power future economic expansion through the use of coal.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-31877595" rel="nofollow">A global campaign</a> to divest from coal has gained traction in recent years, as a slew of investment funds, educational institutions and multilateral banks have ended or slashed their funding to coal, but for campaigners, too many global banks, sovereign wealth funds and government lenders are bankrolling expansion of mines and power plants. The UN’s climate arm, the UNFCCC, in recent days has become <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/15/climate-change-un-backs-divestment-campaign-paris-summit-fossil-fuels" rel="nofollow">increasingly vocal that investors and governments must end their funding for the fuel</a>, a move which has angered the coal lobby. {chop}</p>
Thursday, March 19, 2015 - 12:30amChinaFileDark Days for Women in China?http://www.chinafile.com/node/14131
<p><em>With China’s recent <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/12/five-chinese-feminists-held-international-womens-day" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">criminal detention of five feminist activists</a>, gender inequality in China is back in the spotlight. What does a crackdown on Chinese women fighting for equal representation say about the current state of the nation’s political landscape? Who is served by rolling back the progress Chinese women have made and why are women being targeted now?</em> —The Editors</p>
Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - 5:20pmChinaFileCameroon Highlights Pros and Cons of Chinese Infrastructure Developmenthttp://www.chinafile.com/node/13851
<p>When finished, the new deep-sea port in the southern Cameroonian city of Kribi will likely become a major gateway for all of Central Africa. This will be Cameroon’s only deep-sea port that can accommodate the larger inter-continental trading ships. This might explain why officials have placed such a huge financial bet on the project. The wager is that the billion dollars of low-cost Chinese loans Cameroon is taking on will be offset by revenue generated from a surge in trade and economic activity. With hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, the Kribi port project is also potentially risky for China. Shannon Tiezzi, China Editor at The Diplomat, explains that Beijing is investing heavily in port projects around the world as part of its new Maritime Silk Road initiative. Tiezzi joins Eric and Cobus this week to discuss this new Silk Road and why Africa may emerge as a critical hub.<span class="cube"></span></p>
<h3>Recommendations</h3>
<ul><li>“<a href="http://thediplomat.com/2015/02/whats-it-like-to-have-china-build-you-a-port-ask-cameroon/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">What’s It Like to Have China Build You a Port? Ask Cameroon</a>,” Shannon Tiezzi, The Diplomat, February 27, 2015</li>
<li>“<a href="http://thediplomat.com/2015/01/chinas-maritime-silk-road-dont-forget-africa/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">China’s ‘Maritime Silk Road’: Don’t Forget Africa</a>,” Shannon Tiezzi, The Diplomat, January 29, 2015</li>
</ul>Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - 6:41amChinaFileChinese Businesses Eye Purchasing Power of LGBT Communityhttp://www.chinafile.com/node/14066
<p>Chinese businesses are starting to show interest in the purchasing power of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) consumer market, often referred to as the <span>“</span>pink dollar,<span><span>” </span></span>a trend led by e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.</p>
<p>The U.S. business magazine <em>Forbes</em> says the purchasing power of the LGBT community worldwide amounts to $3 trillion annually. LGBT Capital, a venture capital firm in Hong Kong, says the figure for the mainland is $300 billion. What<span>’</span>s more, research shows LGBT consumers have above-average brand loyalty to companies they see as friendly.</p>
<p>While it is commonplace to see Western multinationals like Google Inc. and Coca-Cola Co. sponsor pride festivals and even marriage equality in the United States and Europe, the market potential is underdeveloped in China, which decriminalized homosexuality in 1997.</p>
<p>Alibaba<span>’</span>s shopping website is among the first group of companies eyeing the <span>“</span>pink dollar<span><span>”</span>—</span>or maybe the <span>“</span>pink yuan<span>”</span> is more accurate.</p>
<p>Taobao caused a stir in China on February 14 with its same-sex marriage themed promotion <span>“</span>We Do.<span>”</span> It partnered with several LGBT non-governmental organizations<span>—</span>including PFLAG China and the Beijing LGBT Center<span>—</span>to send 10 same-sex couples on paid honeymoons to Los Angeles. The prize offered the winners the chance to marry legally in California.</p>
<p>Taobao also sold a line of LGBT-themed bedding in partnership with Shanghai Bliss Home Textile Co. Ltd. and sold package holidays to five countries where same-sex marriage is legal.</p>
<p>Those marriages would not be legally recognized in China, but an Alibaba spokesman said the aim of the promotion was to raise awareness and understanding of LGBT issues in the country. </p>
<p>Jacob Huang, the 26-year-old director of the Workplace Program at the Aibai Center, an LGBT rights advocacy group in the capital, said the promotion was a significant step forward for Chinese companies.</p>
<p><span>“</span>It<span>’</span>s a good sign,<span>”</span> he said. <span>“</span>It shows that it<span>’</span>s a turning point for companies to realize that being open and diverse about the LGBT community is good for their business.<span>”</span></p>
<p>Huang, who works with Chinese and foreign companies to boost equality and workplace inclusion, said only a few businesses in China have realized the importance of the pink dollar, but <span>“</span>the next five or 10 years will see an explosion.<span>”</span></p>
<p><span>“</span>They are also trying to test how tolerant the environment is, and how tolerant the media, the public, and the Chinese government are on the LGBT subject,<span>”</span> he said.</p>
<p>Entrepreneurs are also seeking to profit from LGBT consumers through social media and online dating platforms. Ma Baoli, a former policeman, launched the gay dating mobile application Blued in 2012, after starting an online resource center for the LGBT community called Danlan.org. The app company has 60 employees and more than 15 million users, making it the largest platform of its kind in the world.</p>
<p>Ma said he plans to add an e-commerce function to Blued this year. The company also launched an English-language version of the app in the Netherlands on February 9.</p>
<p>Foreign and Chinese investors have shown interest in the dating app. The U.S. venture capital firm DCM Ventures invested US$ 30 million in Blued in November, and Beijing-based Crystal Stream Capital also committed an undisclosed amount.</p>
<p>Paul Thompson, the founder of LGBT Capital, said marketing to the LGBT community in China is still at an early stage of development, and he cited as obstacles a lack of understanding of the market and of strategies that could be used to target consumers.</p>
<p><span>“</span>We see the challenges being the lack of visibility of the market and companies still not understanding the potential and how to target this market,<span>”</span> he said. <span class="cube"></span></p>
Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - 1:49pmChinaFileThe Education of Detained Chinese Feminist Li Tingtinghttp://www.chinafile.com/node/14021
<p><em>On March 6, Chinese police detained a group of feminist activists ahead of International Women’s Day. Five of them, remain in criminal detention on suspicion of “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/12/five-chinese-feminists-held-international-womens-day" target="_blank">picking quarrels and causing a disturbance</a>,” a crime frequently invoked to silence dissent in China that can carry heavy prison sentences. The <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/09/world/asia/china-detains-womens-rights-activists-in-several-cities.html" target="_blank">activists planned to distribute stickers</a> on public transportation calling on police to do more to fight sexual harrassment. One of the women who remains in custody, Li Tingting, is the subject of the following chapter excerpted from Eric Fish’s forthcoming book, </em><a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442248847" target="_blank">China’s Millennials: The Want Generation</a>. —<em>The Editors</em></p><p class="dropcap">It is probably fair to say no woman has ever taken more flak for walking into a men’s room than Li Tingting.</p><p>In the run-up to Women’s Day in 2012, the feminist college student was distressed by the one-to-one ratio of public restroom facilities for males and females. She believed that women’s longer wait times necessitated legislation to enforce giving women twice as many toilets. Determined to correct the oversight, she organized demonstrations for true “toilet parity.”</p><p>The “Occupy Men’s Room” movement involved some 20 women who took over male public restrooms periodically over the course of an hour in Guangzhou and Beijing. Outside they distributed fliers and held signs with slogans like “Care for women, starting with toilets.”</p><p>The two events were small and cheeky, causing no more trouble than a little embarrassment for a few men. Most onlookers just laughed it off and expressed support for the cause. Li Tingting did not figure that her action could draw the wrath of authorities. She could not have been more wrong.</p><p>“We didn’t think it was sensitive,” she laughed. “But I guess we can’t gauge the risk since the government is so strange.”</p><p>When I met Li a year after her “Occupy” movement, I could not help but find it amusing that she had been considered a threat by China’s vast “stability maintenance” apparatus. Whether the petite 24-year-old was recounting one of her quirky demonstrations or the childhood beatings she had endured, she ended nearly every thought with a mischievous giggle.</p><p>Li was born in the rural outskirts of Beijing. She described her mother as a sweet and caring woman who had endured pain her entire life. Her father, on the other hand, she labeled a stubborn chauvinist.</p><p><div class="cboxes article wide2 grid-4 img-yes logo-no"><div class="cb-head"> <h3><a href="/conversation">Conversation</a></h3> <span class="date">03.18.15</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon4.gif"></span></div><div class="cb-link"><a href="/conversation/dark-days-women-china"></a></div><div class="cb-img"><a href="/conversation/dark-days-women-china"><img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/20150318-detained5-001.jpg?itok=j1R2jawG" alt="" /></a></div><div class="cb-cont"> <h2><a href="/conversation/dark-days-women-china">Dark Days for Women in China?</a></h2> <span class="authors"><a href="/conversation/dark-days-women-china">Rebecca E. Karl, Leta Hong Fincher & <a href="/conversation/dark-days-women-china">more</a></a></span> <div class="inner-content"> <p>With China’s recent criminal detention of five feminist activists, gender inequality in China is back in the spotlight. What does a crackdown on Chinese women fighting for equal representation say about the current state of the nation’s political landscape? Who is served by...</p> </div> </div></div></p><p>According to Li, her parents had been forced to marry young after becoming pregnant with her. As a child, her father delivered fertilizer for a farming company, but he was exceptionally unpopular with his colleagues. He had narrowly failed the <em>gaokao</em> college entrance exam after high school and remained perpetually bitter about the peasant’s existence to which that failure had relegated him. So when his company had to start laying off workers, he was one of the first to go. A few years later, he was offered his job back, but he was too proud to accept.</p><p>Li’s mother picked up the slack, moving to a distant part of Beijing to work in a factory. Though she was bringing in the money and even continued to do the housework when she was home, her husband remained firmly in charge. His orders were non-negotiable and any affront by his wife or daughter resulted in a beating. Li remembered getting thrashings for things as simple as writing with her left hand rather than her right.</p><p>She would go on to a top-tier college in Xi’an, where she became involved in activism and later set up a gender equality advocacy network. By 2013 the group consisted of some 200 active volunteers around China, many of whom, like Li, had grown up experiencing domestic violence. They advocated for equal-rights legislation and highlighted discriminatory behavior in government and businesses. But the work that made them famous was their “performance art”—a term deliberately used to dodge the political sensitivity of “protest.”</p><p>Their performances usually related to events that they considered discriminatory, and they were designed to garner wide attention on social media. On one occasion, they shaved their heads to protest some universities’ practice of lowering admissions standards for boys in order to maintain a gender balance with higher-achieving girls. On another occasion, they went into action after the Shanghai subway authority addressed a groping epidemic on its trains by suggesting that women “have some self-respect” and not dress so provocatively. A few volunteers proceeded to <a href="http://www.ministryoftofu.com/2012/06/shanghai-metro-blames-sexual-harassment-on-womens-immodest-clothing-netizens-reaction/" target="_blank">board the subway</a> wearing miniskirts, metal breast protectors, and signs saying “I can be slutty, but you can’t get dirty.”</p><p>The girls frequently rallied against domestic violence, which is rampant in China. In <a href="http://www.partners4prevention.org/sites/default/files/resources/china_quantitative_full_report.pdf" target="_blank">one survey</a> conducted by Beijing Forestry University and the Anti-Domestic Violence Network, half of Chinese men admitted to violence against their partners.</p><p><div class="cboxes article wide2 grid-4 img-yes logo-no"><div class="cb-head"> <h3><a href="/reporting-opinion/features">Features</a></h3> <span class="date">11.06.14</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon4.gif"></span></div><div class="cb-link"><a href="/reporting-opinion/features/no-women-need-apply"></a></div><div class="cb-img"><a href="/reporting-opinion/features/no-women-need-apply"><img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/e12-527.jpg?itok=dDg2GmrS" alt="" /></a></div><div class="cb-cont"> <h2><a href="/reporting-opinion/features/no-women-need-apply">No Women Need Apply</a></h2> <span class="authors"><a href="/reporting-opinion/features/no-women-need-apply">Lijia Zhang</a></span> <div class="inner-content"> <p>“Applicants limited to male.” 23-year-old job-hunter Huang Rong (not her real name) noticed this line in a job announcement only after she had heard nothing from the recruiter and gone back to check the advertisement online. She had graduated from Xinyang Normal University in...</p> </div> </div></div></p><p>Since 2001, China’s <a href="http://www.npc.gov.cn/englishnpc/Law/2007-12/13/content_1384064.htm">marriage law</a> had specifically prohibited “domestic violence,” but it failed to lay out any legal recourse or even define what constituted abuse (though at the time of this writing, comprehensive domestic abuse legislation had been <a href="http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-11/25/c_133813641.htm">drafted</a> and was awaiting approval by the National People’s Congress). As a result, police and courts remained hesitant to take on these cases and tended to push couples to reconcile. “Some women get abused for 10 years, or even 30 years, because once she leaves her husband, she might lose her home and children,” Li said. “That’s the reason they don’t leave.”</p><p>On Valentine’s Day 2012, Li and two other volunteers decided to call attention to the problem of domestic violence by wearing bridal gowns splattered with red paint to resemble blood. They marched down a crowded Beijing shopping street, holding signs and chanting slogans like “Love is not an excuse for violence.” They jokingly chided couples holding hands, warning them to be vigilant against abuse.</p><p>The crowd was mostly receptive, but unlike their earlier performances, the subject matter made some people uncomfortable. A common saying in China reflects the traditional attitude: “Family ugliness must not be aired.” (<em>jiachou buke waiyang</em>). To many Chinese men and women alike, beating is a normal part of marriage, and it certainly is not something to be discussed outside the home. “Many families had no humor,” Li recalled. “There were even some chauvinists in China saying feminists are evil—that our group is evil.”</p><p>As they marched down the street, they were confronted by <em>chengguan</em> (urban management officials) warning that they had not registered their three-person demonstration. The officers followed the women until they left.</p><p><div class="cboxes article wide2 grid-4 img-yes logo-no"><div class="cb-head"> <h3><a href="/reporting-opinion/viewpoint">Viewpoint</a></h3> <span class="date">04.23.14</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon4.gif"></span></div><div class="cb-link"><a href="/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/half-sky-leftovers"></a></div><div class="cb-img"><a href="/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/half-sky-leftovers"><img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/leftover_women_sm.jpg?itok=xk36wrrO" alt="" /></a></div><div class="cb-cont"> <h2><a href="/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/half-sky-leftovers">From Half the Sky to ‘Leftovers’</a></h2> <span class="authors"><a href="/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/half-sky-leftovers">Mei Fong & Leta Hong Fincher</a></span> <div class="inner-content"> <p>The three-plus decades since the inception of the ‘one child’ policy have resulted in a huge female shortage in China. The country is now seriously unbalanced, with 18 million more boys than girls. By 2020, there will be some 30 million surplus men in China, a condition some...</p> </div> </div></div></p><p>The “Occupy Men’s Room” demonstration a few days later was meant to address a less threatening gender-related issue that could gain broad support. After all, long bathroom lines for women also affect the men who accompany them. “In the beginning we thought it was very humorous,” Li said.</p><p>Most people did see the humor. After the first event in Guangzhou, the movement went viral on Weibo and started getting international attention. By the time the Beijing demonstration rolled around a week later, it was a media circus involving nearly every major domestic and foreign news outlet in the city. Li gave interviews under her “Li Maizi” public pseudonym, hoping that anonymity would keep her under the radar. It did not.</p><p>Perhaps it was all the foreign media attention focused on China’s gender issues. Perhaps it was bad timing, as the National People’s Congress would meet the following week. Or perhaps Li’s ability to organize large groups for public demonstrations seemed threatening. She still is not completely sure why, but the Beijing event introduced her to the suffocating grip of China’s “stability maintenance” apparatus.</p><p>“Stability maintenance” euphemistically refers to the country’s vast internal security network, tasked with stamping out any hint of potential unrest. It includes multiple agencies and thousands of offices overseeing surveillance, censorship, police, special informants, community volunteers, and even contract thugs. Since 2010, spending on the system has <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-03-06/china-s-spending-on-internal-police-force-in-2010-outstrips-defense-budget" target="_blank">outstripped</a> the country’s entire military budget.</p><p>The day of the Beijing “Occupy” performance, the propaganda department sent directives for media to stop covering the moment. Then immediately after the demonstration, two plainclothes men escorted Li to their unmarked car. Only their badges, without names or numbers, identified them as police.</p><p>To Li’s surprise, the men took her to a fancy restaurant and treated her to a feast. “The good thing is you can eat a big dinner,” she giggled while recounting the story. “Stability maintenance has a big budget for this sort of thing, and the standard for people like me—the lowest, I think—is having to spend at least 600 yuan ($96) on the meal.”</p><p>The officers kept her there for the rest of the day. They were subtle in their message and kept the conversation light. But eventually they got to the point and warned her to cease her demonstrations, stop posting on Weibo, and stop giving interviews.</p><p>Later that evening, six marked police cars with ten uniformed officers pulled up to her parents’ home in rural Beijing. They took Li’s terrified father to a restaurant, lavishing the same 600-yuan banquet on him that his daughter had enjoyed. For him they even brought an offer to the table, saying that if he could get Li to discontinue her activities, they could arrange a cushy government job for her at the local Women’s Federation. “If my family had something—such as if we owned a factory—they could just threaten to shut it down,” Li speculated. “But my family had nothing to lose, so they offered me a job.”</p><p>Li’s father had always pushed her to try entering civil service and was disappointed and humiliated when she instead delved into feminist causes. But somehow, she now had a shortcut to his dream dangling right in front of her. After living a simple rural life for so long, he yearned to see his daughter enter the Golden Rice Bowl and improve the family’s fortunes.</p><p>But Li did not bite. She continued giving interviews and kept posting on Weibo, so authorities stepped up the pressure. They showed up again and took her to their car, but there was no fancy dinner this time; just a brief session of “good cop, bad cop.” They told her that defying their orders constituted a betrayal of “trust between friends.” They also wined and dined her father a few more times, but it became clear that he had no power over her. She was already planning the next demonstration.</p><p>For Women’s Day on March 8, 2012 she and her volunteers slated an action in front of a Beijing government building in opposition to invasive gynecological exams that female civil service applicants were forced to undergo. This time, though, the authorities were one step ahead of her. On the day when the demonstration was to happen, Li phoned a friend to make final preparations. Within half an hour, police showed up at her door. She would later realize that they had tapped her phone and hacked her email.</p><p>Li was brought to the police station for a long interrogation, released, then awakened again early the next morning for another session. Finally, the police invoked leverage that Li could not ignore by calling her university in Xi’an, where she was still awaiting graduation. The vice-dean of her department and her counselor were dispatched to retrieve her from Beijing. “My counselor was proud of me,” Li said, “but told me I’d better stay at school and read more books.”</p><p>The vice-dean told Li she needed to stay on campus and check in regularly, but she would be given a token work-study position paying 120 yuan ($19) per month that is usually reserved for students from low-income families. Li retorted, “How about I give you 120 yuan and you give me my freedom!”</p><p>But by this point, the harassment was finally starting to wear on her. She made a calculated decision to retreat to Xi’an, then continue her demonstrations in the more open-minded city of Guangzhou until the heat was off in Beijing.</p><p>Over the following months, authorities would still listen in on Li’s phone calls and frequently called to check in, but she was largely left alone outside Beijing. I asked whether her “Occupy Men’s Room” experience had hampered her in any way. “Sometimes it bothered me,” she replied. “But this thing passed, and now I’ll say it was just one period of my life. Sometimes I’m scared, but I have some peers backing me, so I’m not afraid of them.”</p><p><div class="cboxes books wide3 grid-6 img-yes logo-yes"><div class="cb-head"> <h3><a href="/library/books">Books</a></h3> <span class="date">07.31.14</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon4.gif"></span></div><div class="cb-link"><a href="/library/books/leftover-women"></a></div><div class="cb-img"><a href="/library/books/leftover-women"><img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/books/system/leta-hong-fincher-leftover-women.jpg?itok=r079_jnZ" alt="" /></a></div><div class="cb-cont"> <h2><a href="/library/books/leftover-women">Leftover Women</a></h2> <span class="authors"><a href="/library/books/leftover-women">Leta Hong Fincher</a></span> <div class="inner-content"> <p>A century ago, Chinese feminists fighting for the emancipation of women helped spark the Republican Revolution, which overthrew the Qing empire. After China's Communist revolution of 1949, Chairman Mao famously proclaimed that "women hold up half the sky." In the...</p> </div> </div> <div class="cb-logo"> <a href="/library/books/leftover-women" target="_self"><img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/assets/images/books/covers/fincher_cover.jpg"></a> </div></div></p><p>In an earlier era, a rabble-rouser like Li Tingting could have been dealt with easily enough. The state could have held her entire future ransom, or simply scared her straight by dispatching her to a labor camp for a few years. But in today’s information age, Li’s network gave her a measure of security. Still, the “Occupy” experience gave Li a stark reminder that she could push the envelope only so far. If political winds shifted or she somehow crossed a line and the Communist Party felt that its legitimacy had been questioned, it would not hesitate to bring the hammer down hard. China’s labor camps and prisons house dozens of activists just as influential as Li who focused their efforts on more sensitive goals like democracy, Tibetan autonomy, or recognition for Falun Gong.</p><p>Li’s case illustrated that even social movements pushing only slightly controversial agendas tend to irk the Communist Party. “I know what I do is a good thing,” Li told me. “But it’s hard to communicate with the government because they’re biased against non-governmental organizations. They think they always make trouble and are bad for society.”</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p class="dropcap">Contrary to most of the young people it governs, the CCP has been slow to embrace the rapidly emerging diversity in China. While uneasiness over the organizational power of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) is one reason why groups like Li’s get harassed, there is a bit more to the story.</p><p>Wei Xiaogang, a prominent Chinese gay-rights activist and filmmaker, told me that the government generally does not believe it has failed to give people any of the rights they need, and it certainly does not like being challenged. “I think they force people to think collectively,” he said. “They want a very harmonious society. They want everyone to be the same as everyone else.”</p><p>Wei added that China’s feminist movement in particular suffers because China’s elder male leaders are uncomfortable with gender issues. Among the 204 leaders on the Communist Party’s all-powerful Central Committee, only <a href="http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/13/why-do-men-dominate-chinese-politics-because-theyre-just-too-superb/" target="_blank">10 were women</a> as of 2014.</p><p>In the same way that feminism challenges the traditional patriarchal culture of China, Wei’s fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights challenges the country’s traditional family structure. For Li Tingting, both issues are near and dear to her heart and, in fact, closely linked to one another.</p><p>During her elementary- and middle-school years, Li realized that she was attracted to other girls. She thought that she must have some sort of illness. At the time, homosexuality was still classified as a psychiatric disorder in China and was never discussed in textbooks or media. But eventually Li went online and discovered that she was not alone. “In high school about three or four friends knew my sexual orientation,” she said. “But at that time, I just didn’t want others to know.”</p><p>By the time Li entered college, homosexuality’s social stigma had subsided enough that she fully embraced her sexuality and came out to everyone—except her parents. While homosexuality does not face the same degree of religious opposition in China as in many Western countries, it can be considered an affront to the Confucian notion of filial piety and continuing one’s family line. Failing to marry and bear offspring in China is viewed as a slap in the face to one’s parents.</p><p> <div class="node-video author-inkaman odd cboxes video wide2 grid-4 img-yes logo-no" id="node-video-7111"><!-- cboxes wide2 logo-no img-yes grid-4 article --> <div class="cb-head"> <h3> Video</h3> <span class="date">08.12.14</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon9.gif"></span> </div> <div class="cb-link"><a href="/multimedia/video/chinese-dreamers"></a></div> <div class="cb-img"><img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/video/system/r_sequence_14.still001.jpg?itok=JEaUTERQ" alt="" /></div> <div class="cb-cont"> <h2><a href="/multimedia/video/chinese-dreamers" title="Chinese Dreamers">Chinese Dreamers</a></h2> <span class="authors"> <div class="field field-name-field-common-contributors field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden"> <div class="field-items"> <span >Sharron Lovell & Tom Wang</span> </div> </div> </span> <div class="inner-content"> <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"> A dream, in the truest sense, is a solo act. It can’t be created by committee or replicated en masse. Try as you might, you can’t compel your neighbor to conjure up the reverie that you envision. And therein lies the latent, uncertain energy in the... </div> </div> </div></div></p><p>As with many social issues, the disparity in attitudes between older and younger generations can present just as big a barrier to progress as government resistance. Indeed, the two factors tend to be intertwined.</p><p>Xin Ying, a 27-year-old lesbian from Wuhan and Program Director of the Beijing LGBT Center, explained to me how this dynamic played out in her own family. She was active in high-profile public stunts to raise awareness for LGBT and gender issues, including “Occupy Men’s Room.” But the demonstration that got her the most attention occurred when she invited reporters to watch as she and her girlfriend attempted to register for marriage at Beijing’s Civil Affairs Bureau (where she was denied). After a picture of the couple kissing outside the bureau was splashed across newspapers, several family friends quietly mentioned it to her mother. “My mom said, ‘You want me to go crazy! Why do you do such a disgusting thing?’” Xin recalled.</p><p>However, nobody dared say anything to the family’s patriarch. Ying’s father was still under the impression that she was working for an environmental NGO. Despite all her high-profile advocacy for LGBT rights, she still could not discuss her sexuality directly with him. “Maybe when I become stronger, I can come out to him,” she said.</p><p>Xin explained that this perceived threat to family stability is what irks the government most about the LGBT cause. “We all know families are sort of the unit of society,” she said. “So if same-sex couples can get married, it kind of destroys the traditional concept of family. That’s why the government gets so upset about this.”</p><p>Though homosexuality has been perfectly acceptable on paper for more than a decade, authorities have continued to crack down on LGBT film festivals, parades, and clubs while censoring depictions of homosexuals in entertainment. The country has yet to enact an anti-discrimination law protecting LGBT individuals, let alone put gay marriage up for debate in the National People’s Congress. In 2013, police in the central city of Changsha went so far as to <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/27/world/asia/china-gay-rights-jiang" target="_blank">throw a 19-year-old activist in jail</a> for 12 days after he led a street rally against homophobia.</p><p>Ironically, the government’s attempt to maintain the status quo may be causing more harm than good to “family stability.” Because of the intense social pressure to marry and bear children, Chinese homosexuals overwhelmingly enter heterosexual marriages. A University of Shanghai sexologist <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/03/201331993139528103.html?utm=from_old_mobile">estimated</a> that as many as 90 percent of gay Chinese men marry unsuspecting straight women (compared to 15 to 20 percent in the U.S.). Media periodically report disasters sprouting from these loveless and sexless marriages, ranging from bitter divorces to <a href="http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/754400.shtml" target="_blank">suicide</a>.</p><p>Many Chinese homosexuals have begun sidestepping these problems through “cooperative marriages,” in which a gay man marries a lesbian with the understanding that it is all an act for the sake of family and career. This practice started gaining rapid popularity in the early 2010s, with matchmaking websites emerging to accommodate them. But these arrangements have their own problems—such as whether to have a child and how the family assets are divided—that tend to place a heavier burden on the woman. And even in these sham marriages, domestic abuse still occurs.</p><p>This is one reason why Li Tingting chose to focus primarily on women’s rights. While LGBT issues are a major concern for her, she felt that gay men had greater political advantages. For example, they have been able to piggyback on the less sensitive HIV/AIDS prevention movement to get media attention and face time with government officials. Lesbians, however, have few avenues to raise their voice and even feel disrespected by male gay-rights activists. “I realized that if gender discrimination can’t be wiped out in China, then there’s no lesbian movement,” Li said.</p><p>Like Xin Ying, Li was very hesitant to reveal her sexuality to her family. She finally worked up the nerve to tell her mother during college and was relieved to learn that she had already known for a decade. Her father was less accepting, though. He found out when documentary filmmakers accidentally let the secret slip while shooting at their home.</p><p>Even though well aware that his daughter was gay, he still pressured her to get married and have kids. She resisted and then went a step further by suggesting that if he had any interest in working, he could get paid to give speeches about having a lesbian daughter. The suggestion infuriated him. “Now he just doesn’t ask about it,” Li said. “I’m out of his control now. He used to beat me but now he can’t. I’m grown up and can resist, so he just says I’m trash and other mean words.”</p><p>When I spoke with Li, she was trying to persuade her mother to get a divorce, and for years had been pushing her to speak up for herself more. “But there’s a generation gap,” Li lamented. “My mom thinks there’s no absolute gender equality.”</p><p>Li said she sympathizes with women who do not fight back against abuse and discrimination. To some extent, she even sympathizes with men like her father, whom society educated to be the way they are. “But that’s the reason I need to stand now,” she added. “This society needs young people to speak out—to point out the fact that the genders in China are unequal. This is social advocacy and policy advocacy. Nature is very hard to change, but the policy is very easy to change.”</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p class="dropcap">Policy was indeed changing. It is impossible to know how much the changes are the result of campaigns like Li’s, but it is hard to discount the connection.</p><p>Soon after the “Occupy Men’s Room” protests, several major city governments began suggesting (and in some cases even legislating) that new buildings have more toilet facilities for women than for men. Then, after the feminist volunteers targeted companies responsible for job advertisements that discriminated against women, several were fined by the Beijing government.</p><p>These successes motivated Li more than “stability maintenance” discouraged her. A few weeks before I met her in 2013, the Sichuan Supreme Court in Chengdu had upheld the death sentence for a woman who had killed her husband during a beating session after years of abuse at his hands. Li and the volunteers organized a petition to stop the execution and were even so bold as to protest outside the courthouse. But always mindful of the need to be strategic, they demonstrated on a day when court was not in session and police were not on hand. In the end, the execution was quietly cancelled and the following year the sentence was completely overturned in a <a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/china-insider/article/1539450/death-sentence-overturned-landmark-chinese-domestic-violence-case?page=all">landmark case</a>.</p><p>While the Communist Party once appeared to be an omnipresent and all-powerful monolith, young people pushing for social change today have little memory of the bloodshed in Tiananmen. And today they are finding strength in numbers online. These changes have made authorities seem a more vulnerable, though certainly still formidable, force to contend with. Youth activists are finding that when pushing for particular social changes, they sometimes get their wish rather than a prison sentence.</p><p>Still, young social activists like Li Tingting, though apparently growing in number, represent a tiny fraction of Chinese youth. “Most of my generation is afraid to speak up,” she said. “They feel helpless and don’t do anything. But I don’t want to blame them because there’s actually no real law that protects their rights.”</p><p>Li points to worries that the government might use violence on students again if it felt threatened. The conformist education that numbs Chinese to activism is another problem. To express a different opinion is risky; to actively organize others to protest on behalf of that opinion is downright dangerous with little tangible benefit.</p><p>But to Li, the most compelling disincentive for youth to engage in political activity is that it presents a distraction from their primary pursuit: money. “If you can earn more money, you are successful,” she said. “We don’t educate people to chase their dreams; we just need to make more money. In China, we’re just chasing GDP.”</p><p>Li echoed the regrets often expressed over the lagging political consciousness of Chinese youth, saying that abstract social progress tends to be a low priority next to the many immediate pressures they face. “If you want to chase your dream, you’ll have a low salary,” she said. “You’ll have no time to get a higher position. If you’re a man, you must marry and you must have a house and a car. So it’s big pressure. For me, it’s very hard to ask the post-90s generation to chase their dreams.”</p><p>Since graduating from college, Li had been working for a gender equality NGO in Beijing with a paltry monthly income of 3,000 yuan (U.S.$480)—less than what most migrant laborers in the city made. Still, there was nowhere else she would rather be. “Places like Switzerland or Taiwan already have good gender equality—[they are] maybe 30 years ahead of us,” she said. “Moving there would be nice, but there’s not much I could do to help there. I love China.”</p><p>“Change is step by step,” Li continued. “But we must push it. Some people say there can’t be absolute gender equality, so there’s no point in fighting for it. But if you fight for something, it shouldn’t be because you think it can be achieved. You should fight for it because it’s right.”<span class="cube"></span></p>Monday, March 16, 2015 - 4:22pmChinaFileThe Spy Cables: Chinese Espionage in Africahttp://www.chinafile.com/node/13616
<p>Buried in the trove of secret intelligence documents known as “<a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/02/spy-cables-world-espionage-snowden-guardian-mi6-cia-ssa-mossad-iran-southafrica-leak-150218100147229.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">The Spy Cables</a>” obtained by Al Jazeera and <em>The Guardian</em> is a passing reference to allegations Chinese spies <a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/world/article/1723307/china-spies-suspected-south-africa" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">broke into</a> a South African nuclear facility in 2007. Interestingly, this was the only mention of Chinese espionage in Africa during the period covered in the “Spy Cables” documents from 2006 through the end 2014. Eric and Cobus discuss why it might be that the “Cables” reveal that other intelligence services are seemingly more active in covert intelligence in Africa than the Chinese: “just because you don’t see them, doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”<span class="cube"></span></p>
<h3>Recommendations</h3>
<ul><li>“<a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/02/spy-cables-china-africa-nuclear-break-ins-south-africa-pelindaba-nuclear-guardian-150225131759373.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Spy Cables: ‘China Behind S Africa Nuclear Break-ins’</a>,” Will Jordan, Al Jazeera, February 25, 2015</li>
<li>“<a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/investigations/spycables.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">The Spy Cables: A Glimpse Into the Murky World of Espionage</a>,” Al Jazeera, February 2015</li>
</ul>Friday, March 13, 2015 - 12:37amChinaFileIs China Really Cracking Up?http://www.chinafile.com/node/13941
<p>On March 7, <em>The Wall Street Journal</em> published an <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-coming-chinese-crack-up-1425659198" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">opinion piece</a> by David Shambaugh arguing that “the endgame of Chinese communist rule has now begun...and it has progressed further than many think.” Shambaugh laid out a variety of signs he believes indicate a regime on the cusp of failure. Do you agree with his assessment? Why or why not? <em>— The Editors</em></p>
Wednesday, March 11, 2015 - 4:22pmChinaFileChina’s Polluted Soil and Water Will Drive up World Food Priceshttp://www.chinafile.com/node/13961
<p>China’s push for more intense farming has kept its city dwellers well-fed and helped lift millions of rural workers out of poverty. But it has come at a cost. Ecosystems in what should be one of the country’s most fertile regions have already been badly damaged—some beyond repair—and the consequences will be felt across the world.</p>
<p>This is part of a long-running trade-off between rising levels of food production and a deteriorating environment, revealed in recent <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969714015575" rel="nofollow">research</a> I conducted with colleagues from China and the U.K. Yields of crops and fish have risen over the past 60 years at several locations we studied in Anhui, Jiangsu, and Shanghai provinces in eastern China. But these are accompanied by parallel long-term trends in poorer air and water quality, and reduced soil stability.</p>
<p>You may ask if this a bad thing. After all, increasing agricultural productivity has been one of the factors responsible for lifting millions of rural Chinese out of poverty. Does it really matter that the natural environment has taken a bit of a hit?</p>
<p>Well, yes. For agriculture and aquaculture to be sustainable from one generation to the next, the natural processes that stabilize soils, purify water, or store carbon have to be maintained in stable states. These natural processes represent benefits for society known as <a href="http://biodiversity.europa.eu/topics/ecosystem-services" rel="nofollow">ecosystem services</a>.</p>
<p>Throughout the latter half of the last century, these services were being lost relatively slowly through the cumulative, everyday actions of individual farmers. But the problems accelerated in the 1980s when farmers began to use more intensive methods, especially artificial fertilizers—and again after 2004 when subsidies were introduced.</p>
<h3>Point of No Return</h3>
<p>Worryingly, in some localities, the slow deterioration has turned into a rapid downward spiral. Some aquatic ecosystems have dropped over tipping points into new, undesirable states where clear lakes suddenly become dominated by green algae with losses of high-value fish. These new states are not just detrimental to the continued high-level production of crops and fish but are very difficult and expensive to restore.</p>
<p>These natural processes are degraded and destabilized to the point that they cannot be depended upon to support intensive agriculture in the near future. The whole region is losing its ability to withstand the impact of extreme events, from typhoons to fluctuations in global commodity prices.</p>
<p>National policy must prioritize sustainable agriculture. This will mean big changes on the farm: fertilizer and pesticides must be applied in the correct quantities at the right time of the year, cattle slurry and human sewage must be disposed of properly, chemicals getting into streams and rivers must be reduced, and fish feed has to be controlled.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. Farmers are still generally poor, badly educated, and aging. Good agricultural advice is lacking and big cities still tempt the younger farmers away from their fields. All these factors mean that rapid action is unlikely.</p>
<h3>Reliance on Imports</h3>
<p>The recent introduction of the <a href="http://www.rieti.go.jp/en/china/14030701.html" rel="nofollow">Land Circulation reform policy</a> allows farmers to rent their land to larger combines. The policy is designed to overcome the inefficiencies of small farm holdings, but it may not be taken up widely in the more marginal landscapes where potential profits are low.</p>
<p>All the evidence points to a need for a significantly improved system of information and technology transfer to individual smallholders, probably involving a more efficient coordination between agencies.</p>
<p>But there’s a larger-scale context to this problem that may affect us all. China’s grain production has risen fivefold since the 1950s, outstripping the pace of population growth. Despite this, the nation is no longer self-sufficient. The shift towards more meat production has placed a demand for soybean and cereal animal feed that can no longer be met internally. In 2012, China imported more than 60% of all the world’s soybeans that were available for export, and cereal imports are also on the up.</p>
<p>Reliance on imports to fill a shortfall in home produce is nothing new. But in China’s case, the additional risk that agriculture is increasingly unsustainable may amplify the demand. The potential scale of demand for imports is bound to have repercussions for global food production and food prices. Unless reforms are introduced quickly, the rest of the world may well find that they are sharing China’s trade-off with nature—through the weekly shopping bill.<span class="cube"></span></p>
Wednesday, March 11, 2015 - 12:14pmChinaFileChina’s Good Girls Want Tattooshttp://www.chinafile.com/node/13911
<p>“It seems that Chinese men don’t want to marry a girl with tattoos,” <a href="http://www.douban.com/group/topic/51257110/">complained</a> one such girl on the Chinese online discussion platform Douban. She posted a picture of her body art, an abstract design on her lower back. “In East Asian cultural circles, normal people wouldn’t get tattoos,” responded one user. “After all, this isn’t America.” In another chat forum, someone <a href="http://zhidao.baidu.com/question/303753613126130284.html">asked</a>, “Would a woman with tattoos make a good wife?” A male participant replied, “That depends on where the tattoo is.”</p><p>This is what women’s lib looks like in China, circa 2015: self-expression via discreet body art easily hidden under a T-shirt or work pumps. A new kind of unobtrusive and artsy tattoo, known as <em>xiao qingxin</em> (pronounced shao ching-sheen, and roughly meaning “delicate and refreshing”), offers a generation of young Chinese women a way to be expressive and socially acceptable at the same time. It could be a line of text, etched in elegant English cursive, along the outer edge of a young Chinese woman’s <a href="http://www.weibo.com/1772422652/C4qzY2dHL?from=page_1005051772422652_profile&wvr=6&mod=weibotime&type=comment">foot</a>, or a French phrase <a href="http://weibo.com/5071936500/BtPPklq8M?type=comment#_rnd1425409814222">inscribed</a> on an ankle. Some of the messages are profound, some silly, but they are all part of an emerging trend among young Chinese women, a perfect fit for a <a href="http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1675626,00.html">generation</a> of only children who want to express themselves without violating their parents’ social taboos.</p><p>Tattoos are a relative newcomer to China, where body art is still often associated with burly gangsters dabbling in various forms of criminality. Those norms have been changing; in the capital city, Beijing, for example, tattoo parlors were rare as recently as 1999, but <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/sports/olympics/24tattoo.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0">hundreds</a> have popped up since as rockers, punks, and others willing to push the envelope on socially acceptable behavior get themselves inked. Dianping, a local review site, <a href="http://www.dianping.com/search/keyword/2/0_%E7%BA%B9%E8%BA%AB/o3">lists</a> more than 280 tattoo parlors in Beijing.</p><p>In one parlor called <a href="http://www.dianping.com/shop/15912180">Big House Café Tattoo</a>, a customer can get a tattoo along with a vanilla smoothie.</p><p></p><p>The trend is now migrating to Chinese women. Chinese society still prizes “good girls” who study hard in school, have stable jobs, and marry their first loves—unmarried women over the age of 27 are <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/10786321/Leftover-women-Over-27-Unmarried-Female-Youd-be-on-the-scrapheap-in-China.html">sometimes called</a> “leftover women”—and tattoos haven’t seemed to fit in with this picture of appropriate (read: husband-seeking) feminine behavior. But for a generation of <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/11/china-has-hipsters-too/264414/">emerging hipsters</a>, an artistic tattoo allows them to express their identity and spirituality.</p><p>It may be hip, but from the <a href="http://s.weibo.com/weibo/%E5%B0%8F%E6%B8%85%E6%96%B0%E7%BA%B9%E8%BA%AB?topnav=1&wvr=6&b=1">thousands</a> of online postings from women eager to share their body art in an environment free of parental wrath, it’s clear there’s nothing particularly subversive about this body art. One web user <a href="http://tieba.baidu.com/p/3233850637">shared</a> her new acquisition: four tiny birds beneath a cursive sentence placed just beneath her collar bone reading, “Always make the right call.” (Readers can <a href="http://tieba.baidu.com/p/3233850637">view</a> the images to determine for themselves whether the user did, in fact, follow her own advice.) Another young woman had a bright pink bow <a href="http://weibo.com/3224557017/C6KMsmEND?type=comment#_rnd1425410134903">tattooed</a> under her left armpit. One shared images of a band-aid tattooed on her inner wrist, which she <a href="http://tieba.baidu.com/p/3441721602">said</a> she got only “after thinking it over for six months.”</p><p>It’s a trend that tattoo parlors are happy to encourage. One in the western Chinese city of Xining told <em>Foreign Policy</em> via Weibo that it charges $80 for a small tattoo. <a href="http://weibo.com/u/3916311665">Tattoo Space</a>, a parlor in the northern city of Shijiazhuang, told <em>FP</em> via Weibo that artists there are asked to sketch an “especially large number” of feminine tattoos. And <a href="http://weibo.com/1772422652/C66mWDKhB?from=page_1005051772422652_profile&wvr=6&mod=weibotime&type=comment#_rnd1425329948017">Meichuan Tattoo</a>, a tattoo and piercing shop in Beijing, told <em>FP</em> via Weibo that “nowadays, tons of girls” patronize Meichuan. Small wonder a search for “<em>xiao qingxin</em>” tattoos yielded over 500,000 Weibo search results.</p><p>Delicate as they may be, these tattoos often speak to the courage, even grit, that life as a woman in China sometimes requires. Some <a href="http://www.douban.com/note/401286737/">new mothers</a> use colorful body art to <a href="http://pic.51gaojian.com/xiezhen/uvtecnd.html">disguise</a> the large scar left after a Caesarean section. Others view the tattoos as a confidence-booster. On February 25, one women <a href="http://weibo.com/1610732734/C5RlAdTbf?type=comment#_rnd1424980442899">posted</a> to Weibo a photo of a bare back with a long line of connected English text running down the backbone. “Whenever someone tells me I can’t do something,” reads the tattoo, “I prove them wrong.” Still others may opt to get a tattoo to mark a tragedy. One woman <a href="http://bbs.tianya.cn/post-funinfo-4278116-1.shtml">wrote</a> on a web forum in July 2013 that she has a tiny tattoo of a flame on her ankle. “I got it after the earthquake,” she wrote, referring to the Great Sichuan Earthquake of May 2008, in which more than 69,000 Chinese <a href="/node/977">perished</a>. “It has special commemorative significance. And my husband doesn’t mind it,” she continued. “He actually thinks it looks nice.”</p><p>For many young Chinese women, however, getting inked is still seen as unconventional behavior, frowned upon by their seniors at home and at the workplace. China <a href="http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GGGR14/GGGR_CompleteReport_2014.pdf">registered</a> only 87th in the World Economic Forum’s 2014 ranking of countries by gender equality; although workplace gender discrimination is common, legal protections for women are so vague as to sometimes be unenforceable. That all may explain why Chinese women appear to take workplace restrictions on body art more seriously than men. “I want to get a tattoo,” one woman <a href="http://weibo.com/1772422652/C46xsltkR?from=page_1005051772422652_profile&wvr=6&mod=weibotime&sudaref=weibo.com&type=comment#_rnd1424977015586">confessed</a> on Weibo. “But I don’t dare.”</p><p>Nonetheless, Chinese society is becoming more open to alternative lifestyles and forms of expression. Dai Leichen, a Shanghai native who recently came to the United States for graduate school, told <em>FP</em> that she would not personally choose to get inked, since her family wouldn’t be able to accept it. “From a traditional perspective,” she said, “people with tattoos are usually seen as delinquents.” But that’s starting to change, she has noticed. “Nowadays, Chinese people are more willing to accept [people with] tattoos,” said Dai. Even, Dai added, if they’re girls.<span class="cube"></span></p>Tuesday, March 10, 2015 - 11:23amChinaFileChina’s Factories Are Building a Robot Nation http://www.chinafile.com/node/13901
<p>Every day, two quality-control supervisors monitor four robots tirelessly assembling remote-control devices for home appliances at a Midea Group factory in Foshan, in the southern province of Guangdong.</p>
<p>The robots recently replaced 14 workers on the plant's assembly line for remote controls. And soon, according to Midea's Home Air Conditioner Division Deputy General Manager Wu Shoubao, more robots will arrive to replace the quality-control supervisors.</p>
<p>Midea, a major appliance maker, is in the forefront of a full-blown charge by China's manufacturing sector into robot-powered factory automation. Companies nationwide over the past five years have ramped up robotics in the face of labor woes, such as worker shortages and rising wages, and to cut their production costs. In the process, they've helped build a new market for Chinese robot manufacturers that are competing against multinational rivals.</p>
<p>Labor shortages are partly linked to what Wu says are changing attitudes among young workers. Young adults historically formed the backbone of the country's assembly-line workforce, but he said many born between 1990 and 1999 now shun manufacturing jobs for other pursuits.</p>
<p>The working-age population—defined as those between ages 16 and 59—is slowly declining. The National Bureau of Statistics said this age group's population fell by 371,000 in 2013 to about 915 million last year.</p>
<p>Moreover, companies looking for inexpensive labor in Asia are no longer focusing on basing plants in China alone, as labor costs in many other countries are far lower. The International Labor Organization says an average worker's monthly wage is the equivalent of 911 yuan in Vietnam and 603 yuan in Cambodia, for example, but 3,483 yuan in China.</p>
<p>Midea's automation push got under way in 2011, just as Guangdong-area manufacturers were starting to grapple with labor dilemmas including worker shortages and high turnover. The company imposed a hiring freeze and then implemented a policy requiring that divisions with high turnover install automated systems.</p>
<p>The transformation is continuing today at Midea. Its residential air conditioner division, for example, plans to cut 6,000 of its 30,000 workers by the end of 2015, and another 4,000 by 2018.</p>
<p>Midea invested 800 million yuan between 2011 and last year to install automated systems with some 800 robots. It plans to spend up to 900 million yuan to add another 600 robots this year.</p>
<p>Not only are robots helping Midea resolve labor issues, Wu said, but they're also improving production and product quality.</p>
<h3>Growing Demand</h3>
<p>The International Federation of Robotics (IFR), which represents robot manufacturers and research institutes, said China last year surpassed Japan to become the world's biggest market for industrial robots. Some 200,000 were operating in China at the end of 2014, the IFR said, with 32,000 installed in 2013 alone, accounting for 20 percent of worldwide installations that year.</p>
<p>The robot-to-worker ratio in the country is still relatively low, the IFR said, with 30 robots working in manufacturing plants per 10,000 employees. Japan's ratio is 11 times higher.</p>
<p>Four multinational companies—Switzerland's ABB Group, Japan's Fanuc Corp. and Yaskawa Electric Corp., and Germany's Kuka Robot Group —are the dominant suppliers of robotic systems for factories in China. Mir Industry, a Chinese industrial consultancy, said the four account for about 58 percent of the nationwide market.</p>
<p>Zhang Hui, General Manager of the ABB Small Parts Assembly Center in China, which services robot clients, said his company spent years focusing on the world's developed countries, but now works to win clients in emerging markets with total-solution packages. "In emerging markets such as China, we provide our clients with more solutions than products," Zhang said.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, domestic robot makers are vying for a bigger piece of the action. One up-and-coming company is Foshan Xinpeng Robotics Technology Co. Ltd., most of whose clients are bathroom tile and ceramics manufacturers.</p>
<p>Qin Lei, who founded Xinpeng with 60 workers in 2013, said his company's robots perform ceramic-glazing tasks that pose a health hazard to human workers. Xinpeng reported 30 million yuan in revenues last year on sales of some 100 robots.</p>
<p>Domestic robot manufacturers and systems integrators advertise themselves as better than multinationals for the China market in part because of their expertise in assembly line processes, particularly for computer, telecommunication, and consumer electronics manufacturing, said Deng Qiuwei, General Manager at Shenzhen-based Rapoo Robotics Applications Co. Ltd.</p>
<p>Deng said his company built a robot system for a client's remote-control device assembly line with the goal of integrating the entire process, not just for replacing workers. "We actually used the robots as a platform for realigning the production line," he said.</p>
<p>Manufacturers have benefited from growing competition between Chinese and multinational robot companies. Qin said Chinese robot-makers since around 2010 have been offering budget-priced machines that forced global manufacturers to drastically cut prices. ABB, for example, last year slashed the price of a robot model similar to one made by Xinpeng to 200,000 yuan from 500,000 yuan, he said.</p>
<p>A private equity manager who asked not to be identified said he decided to invest in robot manufacturers after touring recently automated electronics plants in the eastern province of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. He found robots there were being used not only for dangerous jobs and simple tasks, but also to handle complicated chores that otherwise require workers with special skills.</p>
<p>"At first, robots replaced workers who had jobs that exposed them to pollution, such as painting, or required that they repeat the same task," the equity manager said. "But gradually, robots have been used for trades requiring skilled workers, such as welders, because they are cost-effective."</p>
<p>Yet some companies have automated their factories simply because they cannot find enough people. A mid-level manager at an electronic manufacturer said that many businesses that are unable to fill positions have had no choice but to install robots.</p>
<p>"Workers quit every day," he said. "Physically challenging jobs under harsh conditions or jobs requiring repetitive processes are much less attractive to young workers than the older generation."</p>
<p>Zhang Fan, who oversees automation at a Midea factory in Wuhu, in the eastern province of Anhui, said the plant installed one robot in 2011 and another in 2012 to rapidly move 70 kilogram air conditioners on an assembly line—a job that was too strenuous for people.</p>
<h3>Cost Constraints</h3>
<p>The electronics manufacturer Foxconn Technology Group has been among the most aggressive promoters of automation in the country. Playing into the push to replace workers with robots were accusations that its factories abused workers, reportedly leading to suicides.</p>
<p>But the company failed to meet a 2011 goal set by founder Terry Guo, who predicted that by 2014 Foxconn would install 1 million robots at its plants in China. Foxconn's Automation and Robotics Division chief, Dai Jiapeng, said that so far these installations have amounted to only several hundred thousand sets of automation equipment. In other words, Dai said, just over 10,000 robots have been installed on Foxconn assembly lines. He also said automation rates at Foxconn plants vary from 40 to 70 percent.</p>
<p>Guo's goal was apparently too ambitious. For example, Dai said, the company found automation ineffective for assembly lines on which people work better than robots. One Foxconn engineer who preferred not to be named said most Apple Inc. electronic products are still assembled by people because mechanical devices can scratch the products' alloy cases, but fingers do not.</p>
<p>ABB's Zhang said he's recommending Chinese manufacturers look carefully at robots, but take care not to automate their factories more than necessary. Robots are best suited for overcoming labor issues and cutting costs. Ultimately, he said, a unit should improve productivity.</p>
<p>In some cases, hiking wages is more cost-effective than replacing workers with robots, Zhang said. Indeed, he said, ABB's business in China has been slower than previously expected because many companies have found robots are still more expensive than laborers.</p>
<p>It's a different story in Japan, where years ago a shift to robotic manufacturing started with companies seeking to escape high labor costs. Rapoo's Deng noted labor costs in Japan are five times China's.</p>
<p>A Japanese company "could afford to use two robots to replace one worker," Deng said. "But in China, it's only worth considering when one robot can replace three workers."</p>
<p>That said, a lot of Chinese companies including Midea have already decided to push ahead with automation and grow their robot populations.</p>
<p>"If it's a task that a robot can do, we'll have one do it," said Wu Shoubao, Deputy General Manager of Midea's Home Air Conditioner Division. "That's our strategy." <span class="cube"></span></p>
Tuesday, March 10, 2015 - 11:14amChinaFileChina’s Real Inconvenient Truth: Its Class Dividehttp://www.chinafile.com/node/13876
<p>China is <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/02/chinas-national-conversation-on-pollution-has-finally-begun-chai-jing-documentary/">talking</a> about its pollution problem, but its equally serious class problem remains obscured behind the haze. Smog leapt to the forefront of Chinese national discourse after the February 28 <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/02/chinas-national-conversation-on-pollution-has-finally-begun-chai-jing-documentary/">release</a> of "Under the Dome," a 103-minute-long documentary quickly <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-03/-under-the-dome-spawns-pollution-fighting-billionaires-in-china">hailed</a> as China’s version of <em>An Inconvenient Truth</em>. In the film, which immediately went viral on social media and <a href="http://shanghaiist.com/2015/03/03/a_film_about_air_pollution.php">garnered</a> 150 million online views within days before being censored, investigative reporter Chai Jing explained the root causes of air pollution that has ravaged so much of China in the past few years. But there’s a sharp class angle to the pollution question that Chai’s documentary did not engage. While smog is the most visible problem afflicting the middle class in mega-cities like Beijing and Shanghai, China’s other half—the rural and poor population—often suffer a nasty pollution paradox: They face health risks from their air and water, but also depend on polluting industries for their livelihoods.</p><p><div class="cboxes article wide2 grid-4 img-yes logo-no"><div class="cb-head"> <h3><a href="/conversation">Conversation</a></h3> <span class="date">03.03.15</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon4.gif"></span></div><div class="cb-link"><a href="/conversation/why-has-environmental-documentary-gone-viral-chinas-internet"></a></div><div class="cb-img"><a href="/conversation/why-has-environmental-documentary-gone-viral-chinas-internet"><img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/chai-jing-cover.png?itok=WsZnNxW7" alt="" /></a></div><div class="cb-cont"> <h2><a href="/conversation/why-has-environmental-documentary-gone-viral-chinas-internet">Why Has This Environmental Documentary Gone Viral on China’s Internet?</a></h2> <span class="authors"><a href="/conversation/why-has-environmental-documentary-gone-viral-chinas-internet">Angel Hsu, Michael Zhao & <a href="/conversation/why-has-environmental-documentary-gone-viral-chinas-internet">more</a></a></span> <div class="inner-content"> <p>[Updated: March 6,&nbsp; 2015] Our friends at Foreign Policy hit the nail on the head by headlining writer Yiqin Fu's Monday story "China's National Conversation about Pollution Has Finally Begun." What happened? Well, in the last weekend of February, the...</p> </div> </div></div></p><p>As with many subjects, Chinese social media chatter about pollution reflects a middle-class bias. As of March 6, on Weibo, the popular microblogging platform, a search for the term “smog” <a href="http://s.weibo.com/weibo/%25E9%259B%25BE%25E9%259C%25BE?topnav=1&wvr=6&b=1">yielded</a> more than 197.2 million results, “air pollution” <a href="http://s.weibo.com/weibo/%25E7%25A9%25BA%25E6%25B0%2594%25E6%25B1%25A1%25E6%259F%2593&Refer=STopic_box">turned up</a> more than 43.9 million, while “water pollution” and “soil pollution” were only mentioned <a href="http://s.weibo.com/weibo/%25E6%25B0%25B4%25E6%25B1%25A1%25E6%259F%2593&Refer=STopic_box">15.8 million</a> and <a href="http://s.weibo.com/weibo/%25E5%259C%259F%25E5%259C%25B0%25E6%25B1%25A1%25E6%259F%2593&Refer=STopic_box">3.5 million</a> times, respectively. The latter two are less of a concern for the opinion leaders and ordinary users on China’s social media, most of whom live in cities with water treatment plants and work in jobs unrelated to agriculture. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/china-water-pollution-photos-2014-7?op=1">Shocking photos</a> of water pollution in China are not greeted with the same outrage on China’s social media as <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/17/beijing-fake-sunrise_n_4618536.html">photos</a> of smog obscuring central Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Tap water in China is not directly potable, but for the most part urban Chinese don’t think about carcinogens when they turn on the faucet. Occasionally, large Chinese cities have water pollution scares—in April 2014, an oil leak <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27002602">contaminated</a> tap water in Lanzhou, a city of 2.4 million in northwestern China, for example—but supply is usually <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4462760.stm">restored</a> in a matter of days.</p><p>Meanwhile, water pollution and soil contamination plague China’s rural population. Zhong Hongjun, a researcher at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, <a href="http://weibo.com/1974568711/C6PgZ9QzH">wrote</a> on Weibo, “Low-income groups in less developed areas bear most of the cost of water and soil pollution, whereas urban middle class and low income groups share the cost of air pollution.” "Under the Dome" alluded to these problems when it included a short clip of Chai’s 2004 interview with the local environmental protection agency (EPA) director in Shanxi province, who told her that at the time, 88.4 percent of rivers in the province were polluted and 62 percent were no longer useable. In 2014, <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-11-19/chinas-water-supply-is-contaminated-and-shrinking">according</a> to a survey by the national EPA, 60 percent of China’s groundwater was considered “bad” or “very bad.” Villagers who still rely on wells may find their water sources completely <a href="http://m.21jingji.com/article/20150305/3c7b0ed2979b933b90a031a96548570d.html">contaminated</a> by nearby factories, but have little redress.</p><p>Concerns about urban smog have accelerated the relocation of heavy polluters to rural areas, where the local population may be less empowered to resist. For example, in 2005, Shougang, one of China's largest state-owned steel manufacturers, <a href="http://lw.xinhuanet.com/htm/content_1019.htm">moved</a> its main production facility near the center of Beijing to a small town on Bohai Bay, 150 miles from the capital, in response to worries about air pollution ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. In 2014, large cities like Harbin and <a href="http://www.laohucaijing.com/news/11893.html">Hangzhou</a> <a href="http://www.hrbxwzx.com/hrbnews/hrbqy/2014-08-13/1549.html">shifted</a> factories out of their city centers to alleviate public concerns about smog. In a 2011 report, China’s national EPA <a href="http://finance.sina.com.cn/nongye/nyhgjj/20120615/112312323556.shtml">highlighted</a> the transfer of heavy pollution from urban centers to rural areas, and admitted that there was insufficient monitoring of pollution in rural areas. The central government <a href="http://weibo.com/2803301701/C77ziALhX">announced</a> in November 2014 it plans to deliver safe drinking water to 298 million rural residents in 2015, but experts <a href="http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001060911?page=2">believe</a> that target might be impossible to meet.</p><p>At the same time, worries about urban air have also caused factory closures in rural areas where many peasants work. In early 2014, a local newspaper in Hebei province, where the average disposable income was <a href="http://he.people.com.cn/n/2015/0227/c192235-24012403.html">half</a> that of Beijing’s, <a href="http://hebei.news.163.com/14/0226/14/9M11PT6302790BIU_all.html">reported</a> that the authorities had shut down over 1,200 coal factories and demolished 18 concrete plants to address the smog problem. In Luquan, a small town on the outskirts of Hebei’s provincial capital, 11 companies were shuttered in 2013 and more than 800 low-skilled workers lost their jobs. A man named Zhang Baoshan told a reporter that villagers like him once relied on the concrete plants near their homes to make $300 to $800 a month, but many had since been laid off. On March 2, iLabor.org, a platform dedicated to studying issues related to laborers in China, <a href="http://www.ilabour.org/Item/Show.asp?m=1&d=3693">posted</a> a story of nearly 100 migrant workers being dismissed by a clothing manufacturer in the southern city of Dongguan, without advance notice or remuneration, because of EPA enforcement actions.</p><p>At one point in "Under the Dome," Chai showed a map of northern China, with smog from coal-burning industrial plants in Hebei province drifting easily to Beijing. “The air has no walls,” Chai appealed to the audience. “We are all breathing the same air, suffering the same fate.” That’s not entirely true. The experiences of workers at a steel plant in Hebei are decidedly different from those of white-collar office workers in the capital. Chai’s film began a valuable national conversation about air pollution—its dangers, its causes, and its possible solutions. But it left the crucial issue of class almost untouched.<span class="cube"></span></p>Monday, March 9, 2015 - 3:38pmChinaFileUnder the Domehttp://www.chinafile.com/node/13866
<p>Under the Dome, Chai Jing's breakout documentary on China's catastrophic air pollution problem, finally hit insurmountable political opposition last Friday after seven days in which the video racked up over 200 million views. The eventual clampdown raised many questions about the extent of internal support for the documentary.</p><p> <div class="node-article author-jonathan-landreth even cboxes article wide2 grid-4 img-yes logo-no" id="node-article-13671"> <div class="cb-head"> <h3> <a href="/conversation">Conversation</a></h3> <span class="date">03.03.15</span> <span class="type-icon"></span> </div> <div class="cb-link"><a href="/conversation/why-has-environmental-documentary-gone-viral-chinas-internet"></a></div> <div class="cb-img"><img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/chai-jing-cover.png?itok=WsZnNxW7" alt="" /></div> <div class="cb-cont"> <h2><a href="/conversation/why-has-environmental-documentary-gone-viral-chinas-internet" title="Why Has This Environmental Documentary Gone Viral on China’s Internet?">Why Has This Environmental Documentary Gone Viral on China’s Internet?</a></h2> <span class="authors"> <div class="field field-name-field-common-contributors field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden"> <div class="field-items"> <span >Angel Hsu, Michael Zhao & <a href="/">more</a></span> </div> </div> </span> <div class="inner-content"> <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"> [Updated: March 6,&nbsp; 2015] Our friends at Foreign Policy hit the nail on the head by headlining writer Yiqin Fu's Monday story "China's National Conversation about Pollution Has Finally Begun." What happened? Well, in the... </div> </div> </div></div></p><p>In this episode of Sinica, Kaiser Kuo and David Moser interview Calvin Quek of <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/eastasia/">Greenpeace</a>, who works on pollution problems and has significant experience lobbying the private sector to curtail investments in the worst-offending environmentally unsustainable technologies. We are also joined by Peggy Liu, chairperson of <a href="http://juccce.org">JUCCCE</a> (Joint US-China Collaboration on Clean Energy), a non-profit organization focused on Chinese government training and other green initiatives.<span class="cube"></span></p><h3>Recommendations:</h3><ul><li><a href="http://juccce.org/eat">A New Way to Eat</a>, JUCCCE</li><li><a href="http://www.nrdc.cn/coalcap/index.php/English/index">China Coal Consumption Cap Plan and Policy Research Project</a>, Natural Resources Defense Council</li><li><a href="http://www.chinaeconomicreview.com/china-carbon-all">China's Carbon Emissions Could Save the World—Or Doom It</a>, Hudson Lockett, <em>China Economic Review</em></li><li>“<a href="http://longform.org/posts/the-deaf-composer-who-fooled-a-nation">The 'Deaf' Composer Who Fooled a Nation</a>," Christopher Beam, <em>The New Republic</em></li><li>“<a href="http://www.backthatsassup.com/2015/03/the-most-brilliant-politician-you-never-knew/">The Most Brilliant Politician You Never Knew</a>," Beverly Murray, Back That Sass Up</li><li>“<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/09/travels-with-my-censor">Travels with My Censor</a>," Peter Hessler, <em>The New Yorker</em></li></ul>Monday, March 9, 2015 - 12:06pmChinaFileChina’s BIG Gamble in the TINY Comoros Islandshttp://www.chinafile.com/node/13261
<p><a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/cn.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Comoros</a> is a tiny archipelago nation off the east coast of Africa in the Indian ocean where a major Chinese experiment is underway. Chinese scientists and pharmaceutical have undertaken a radical experiment to test an unlicensed anti-malarial herbal medicine on the entire population of the islands. Succeed or fail, the stakes are incredibly high. Separately, Beijing is also playing a high-profile role in the nation’s economic development with its usual package of infrastructure and loans. Journalist Shannon Van Sant traveled to the Comoros Islands on assignment for CBS News and joins us to talk about the PRC’s big gamble on this tiny country.<span class="cube"></span></p>
<h3>Recommendations</h3>
<ul><li>“<a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/why-china-is-investing-in-the-comoros/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Why China is Investing in the Comoros</a>,” Shannon Van Sant, CBS News, November 10, 2014</li>
<li>“<a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/chinas-test-malaria-drug-artequick-experiment-on-population-of-comoros/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">China Tests Malaria Drug On An Entire African Nation</a>,” Shannon Van Sant, CBS News, November 11, 2014</li>
</ul>Friday, March 6, 2015 - 9:44amChinaFileBeijing Says Panda Population Up 17%, But Experts Doubtful http://www.chinafile.com/node/13786
<p>China's claims that its population of wild giant pandas rose around 17% in just over a decade are being disputed by some experts, who point out that the latest census was over a much wider area than the previous one.</p><p>The giant panda, a global emblem of wildlife conservation and symbol of China itself, are found in China's central provinces of Sichuan, Shaanxi, and Gansu.</p><p>But some experts say that the latest survey—the fourth carried out by the Chinese government—involved a <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/experts-question-china-s-panda-survey-1.17020" target="_blank">search </a>that covered 72% more territory than the previous count, which was conducted in the late 1990s and early 2000s.</p><p>Some experts have also raised questions as to what the scientific margin of error is in the Chinese government's panda surveys.</p><p><div class="cboxes article wide2 grid-4 img-yes logo-no"><div class="cb-head"> <h3><a href="/reporting-opinion/media">Media</a></h3> <span class="date">10.23.14</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon4.gif"></span></div><div class="cb-link"><a href="/reporting-opinion/media/pandas-were-monsters"></a></div><div class="cb-img"><a href="/reporting-opinion/media/pandas-were-monsters"><img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/20140908_zaf_x99_069_0.jpg?itok=0_e8CbQ9" alt="" /></a></div><div class="cb-cont"> <h2><a href="/reporting-opinion/media/pandas-were-monsters">Pandas Were Monsters</a></h2> <span class="authors"><a href="/reporting-opinion/media/pandas-were-monsters">Alexa Olesen</a></span> <div class="inner-content"> <p>"Rich Chinese are literally eating this exotic mammal into extinction," read a recent Global Post expose of the devastating trade in the pangolin, a scaly anteater that Chinese consider a delicacy. According to the Post, the adorable animals (which one columnist...</p> </div> </div></div></p><p>The latest official count found that the total area inhabited by wild giant pandas in China now equals 2,577,000 hectares, an expansion of almost 12% since 2003.</p><p>However, the areas giant pandas are found has become increasingly fragmented, and the population of the endangered animals increasingly dispersed.</p><p>Environmental group WWF, which helped with the panda report, said much of the success in increasing the panda population comes as a result of conservation policies implemented by the Chinese government, including the <a href="http://www.forestcarbonasia.org/in-the-media/china-natural-forest-protection-project-phase-ii/">Natural Forest Protection Project</a>’s and <a href="http://www.fao.org/docrep/008/ae537e/ae537e0j.htm" target="_blank">Grain for Green</a>.</p><p>“The survey result demonstrates the effectiveness of nature reserves in boosting wild giant panda numbers,” said Xiaohai Liu, Executive Director of programs at WWF-China.</p><p>The report found that 1,246 wild giant pandas live within nature reserves, accounting for almost 67% of the total wild population. The number of panda nature reserves in China had increased to 67 from 27 in the previous report.</p><p>The fragmentation of habitats, which conservationists define as the separation of wildlife population by physical barriers such as roads, railways, dams, and mines, is increasingly noticeable with about 12% of pandas facing higher risks to their survival, the survey found.</p><p>Traditional threats to pandas such as poaching appear to be declining, but large-scale disturbances including mining, hydro-power, tourism, and infrastructure construction are becoming more severe and were referenced in the government panda survey for the first time.</p><p><a href="https://www.chinadialogue.net/blog/5928-Panda-habitat-threatened-by-phosphate-mining-in-south-west-China/en" target="_blank">Phosphate mining</a> in China is seen as a particularly urgent threat to pandas and their habitats. Skeptics have often raised doubts about the accuracy of China’s panda surveys, claiming that they are strongly influenced by the political priorities of government officials and conservation groups.</p><p>“It’s a fine balancing act, so officials can claim the credit for rising panda populations but the number is not too high to diminish conservation funds,” <em>Nature</em> magazine quoted a Beijing-based researcher with links to China's forestry ministry as saying.</p><p>Conservation experts also point out that pandas' reclusive nature and mountainous habitat make it impossible to do a direct count, meaning that the survey uses two indirect counting methods.<span class="cube"></span></p>Thursday, March 5, 2015 - 12:00amChinaFileClearing Skieshttp://www.chinafile.com/node/13741
<p class="dropcap">After dark is when the pollution arrives on the outskirts of Shanghai. On a bright night, when moonlight refracts through the smog, you can see black clouds of soot pouring out of small workshop smokestacks silhouetted against the sky. In case you miss it in the dark, there's always the morning's first deep breath and the feeling of something raw in your throat.</p><p>I lived and breathed in Shanghai for 12 years, from 2002 to 2014, and those mornings seemed to grow worse. During my last three years, the first thing I'd do after waking—even before checking the weather—was to open the air-quality app on my phone. If the air was rated anything worse than "unhealthy"—the equivalent of "hazardous" under U.S. EPA guidelines, which happened at least monthly in the winter—I'd work from home. Eventually, my wife and I decided that it was time to leave the country—if not for our health, then for that of our first child.</p><p><div class="cboxes article wide2 grid-4 img-yes logo-no"><div class="cb-head"> <h3><a href="/conversation">Conversation</a></h3> <span class="date">03.03.15</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon4.gif"></span></div><div class="cb-link"><a href="/conversation/why-has-environmental-documentary-gone-viral-chinas-internet"></a></div><div class="cb-img"><a href="/conversation/why-has-environmental-documentary-gone-viral-chinas-internet"><img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/chai-jing-cover.png?itok=WsZnNxW7" alt="" /></a></div><div class="cb-cont"> <h2><a href="/conversation/why-has-environmental-documentary-gone-viral-chinas-internet">Why Has This Environmental Documentary Gone Viral on China’s Internet?</a></h2> <span class="authors"><a href="/conversation/why-has-environmental-documentary-gone-viral-chinas-internet">Angel Hsu, Michael Zhao & <a href="/conversation/why-has-environmental-documentary-gone-viral-chinas-internet">more</a></a></span> <div class="inner-content"> <p>[Updated: March 6,&nbsp; 2015] Our friends at Foreign Policy hit the nail on the head by headlining writer Yiqin Fu's Monday story "China's National Conversation about Pollution Has Finally Begun." What happened? Well, in the last weekend of February, the...</p> </div> </div></div></p><p>The source of all that pollution isn't hard to track down. It's fossil fuels, and coal in particular. The numbers are astonishing, and speak to both the growth in China's economy and the penalty it pays for not taking a cleaner route to development. In 2002, for example, China consumed 1.6 billion tons of coal; in 2012 it consumed 4.15 billion tons. Much of that was high-sulfur "dirty" coal burned in factories and power plants where <a href="http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2015-2-march-april/feature/clearing-skies">emissions standards</a> were widely ignored. But coal isn't the sole culprit. Between 2000 and 2013, annual new-vehicle sales in China grew by more than 900 percent, to 22 million (Americans bought 15.6 million cars in 2013). In part to fuel those vehicles, China went from burning 4.8 million barrels of oil per day to 10.1 million barrels per day.</p><p>Other less obvious sources of pollution can be even more damaging. For example, unlike the United States and the European Union, China allows oil tankers and container vessels to burn high-sulfur oil in its ports. Just one such ship cruising the Chinese coast can emit as much pollution in a day as 500,000 trucks. Shipping emissions lead to at least 1,600 deaths per year in China's Pearl River Delta (which includes Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong), according to a 2014 Natural Resources Defense Council study. Altogether, in 2010 air pollution contributed to 1.2 million premature deaths in China, according to data from the 2010 Global Burden of Disease Study. In all likelihood, that number has only increased in recent years.</p><p>In spite of this, I am more optimistic than ever about China's commitment to tackling its pollution. In the past five years, in particular, Chinese citizens, newly empowered by <a href="/taxonomy/term/668">social media</a> (China has more people connected to the <a href="/node/5105">Internet</a> than any other country), have become loud and powerful critics of China's debilitating air quality, and the government is taking notice.</p><p><div class="visual-box vertical left"> <div class="visual-image-box"> <div class="text"><div></div></div> </div> </div></p><p>"It's causing an uproar, and it's a threat to the leadership and the government—which they take very seriously," explained Knut Alfsen, a Norwegian climate scientist and an adviser to the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, a high-level advisory body to the Chinese government.</p><p>The government is starting to take actions small and large. In November, China handed the residents of Beijing a six-day vacation, enacted traffic restrictions, shut down factories, and even closed crematoriums. All so 21 heads of state, including President Barack Obama, attending the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting there, and the international media accompanying them, wouldn't arrive in a smog-choked city.</p><p>The resulting blue skies—quickly dubbed "<a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-11-18/beijings-blue-sky-act-for-apec" target="_blank">APEC blue</a>" by locals—were temporary. But the stunt, according to Ma Jun, perhaps China's most influential environmental advocate and the founder of the Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, had value. "APEC blue demonstrated to people that we don't need to take 30 or 50 years to get our sky back," he said. "This public recognition, emphasized by [Chinese] President Xi [Jinping], is helpful for us."</p><p><div class="cboxes video wide2 grid-4 img-yes logo-no"><div class="cb-head"> <h3><a href="/reporting-opinion/environment">Environment</a></h3> <span class="date">01.23.15</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon2.gif"></span></div><div class="cb-link"><a href="/reporting-opinion/environment/chinas-air-pollution-tipping-point"></a></div><div class="cb-img"><a href="/reporting-opinion/environment/chinas-air-pollution-tipping-point"><img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/video/system/beijing-swpie-2009png.jpg?itok=wLRtI6uj" alt="" /></a></div><div class="cb-cont"> <h2><a href="/reporting-opinion/environment/chinas-air-pollution-tipping-point">China’s Air Pollution: The Tipping Point</a></h2> <span class="authors"><a href="/reporting-opinion/environment/chinas-air-pollution-tipping-point">Michael Zhao</a></span> <div class="inner-content"> <p>Last November, Beijing saw a stretch of solidly clear skies and the Chinese media coined a phrase to describe them: APEC blue. After the diplomats and businesspeople gathered in China’s capital for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum dispersed, and the factories shut...</p> </div> </div></div></p><p>How helpful? At the end of the APEC meeting, Presidents Obama and Xi agreed to a landmark deal on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The details are impressive, including a Chinese promise to cap its total greenhouse gas emissions no later than the year 2030 and to make renewable power 20 percent of its overall energy mix by then. They're also extremely ambitious. "They need to increase renewables by six to eight percent per year to get there by 2030," Alfsen says. That won't be easy, but Alfsen has good reason to believe it'll happen. "When they set targets," he said, referring to Chinese officials, "they usually deliver."</p><p>Despite the significant and long-term challenges to cleaning up China's air and greenhouse gas emissions, four important developments suggest that—just maybe—China's challenges can be met over the long-term.</p><h3>Economic Developments</h3><p>For environmentalists outside China, the country's air pollution problem is an ongoing good-versus-evil emergency. But viewed from within, it's a bit more morally ambiguous. That's not to defend China's pollution but rather to highlight the rapid changes in living standards and life expectancy that three-plus decades of unregulated, fast-growth development have brought to hundreds of millions of China's 1.3 billion citizens.</p><p>When people ask me what changed most during my years in Shanghai, I always answer that each freshman class of kids at the high school up the street from my apartment of eight years was noticeably taller than the last. "Everybody is richer now," one of my friends, a teacher at a different high school, told me. "They can buy better food." That wealth comes from a lot of places, but one of the sources is undoubtedly a fast-growing economy fueled by cheap carbon.</p><p>The health benefits run deeper yet. Consider that between the start of Communist Party rule in China in 1949 and today, the average life span more than doubled to 75 years. A country with no middle class to speak of only three decades earlier suddenly had the world's largest.</p><p>As long as living standards and life expectancy kept moving up—and they did, for decades—air pollution assumed a lower priority than it would have in a developed country. Of course, at some point, economies slow, people have enough to eat, and there are only so many mobile phones you can buy. China reached that point in the mid-2000s. The comeuppance, especially for the government, was powerful. "No country becomes so rich that its citizens do not need to breathe," says Nathaniel Bullard, an analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance who covers clean energy and energy technology from Hong Kong. "The data on health impacts are clear, and just as clear to the government are the social implications of this reduced health, welfare, and happiness."</p><h3>An Avalanche of Data</h3><p>It was also in the mid-2000s that the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs began to post publicly available—but never before collected or collated—data on water pollution to the Web. Suddenly, citizens who'd been willing to ignore pollution were waking up to clear evidence of diminishing returns from fast economic growth. In 2013, only three of the 74 cities that China monitors for air quality met the country's very modest standards. China's mass drive to urbanize, once a source of wealth and better health, now increasingly looked like a pollution-addled trap.</p><p>Still, it has taken time for the government to get the message. As recently as 2011, Chinese state media regularly referred to the thick white haze that hung over China's cities as "fog" rather than "smog." But several years earlier, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing had begun releasing hourly data on China's air pollution <a href="https://twitter.com/beijingair" target="_blank">via Twitter</a>. The feed and eventually Twitter itself were blocked, but savvy Internet users just went about reposting the information to Chinese social media sites. Now many Chinese know what they're breathing and, predictably, they're not happy. "We are seeing pressure to drive the serial polluters to change," says the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs' Ma.</p><p>The avalanche of data is beginning to affect policy. In <a href="/node/2582">January 2013</a>, Beijing experienced what came to be known as an "<a href="/node/2633">airpocalypse</a>”—a smog incident (and not the first) in which pollution levels were off the EPA's air-quality scale. The events, which can last for days, are disturbing, dangerous, and galvanizing. Chinese social media users began demanding action from the government, and the government—an authoritarian institution whose legitimacy is drawn largely from its promise to improve living standards—fast-tracked the installation of air-quality monitors across the country. More significantly, it responded in September 2013 with a comprehensive action plan to tackle China's air pollution that will eliminate coal-fired boilers and upgrade the quality of fuel oil, among other measures. It also requires coal to be reduced to 65 percent of China's energy mix by 2017.</p><p>The increasing volume of data on the sources of Chinese pollution is also making it easier for the committed central government in Beijing to pick its internal fights, and win them.</p><p>For example, real-time pollution data from power plants in highly polluted Hebei and Shandong provinces, collected by the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, show that the 21 largest polluters account for 90 percent of nitrogen oxide emissions. Those emissions could be halved if those plants were held to the new air-quality standards that President Xi announced in 2013. Will such measures solve China's air pollution woes? "That's not something that's fixed in a five-year plan," climate scientist Alfsen said, referring to the social and economic development programs that have guided China since 1953 and are now in their 12th iteration. But the popular sentiment inspiring them is moving China in the right direction. "I'm impressed by the willingness and the priorities of the government, but also the priorities and willingness of the Chinese public," Alfsen said.</p><h3>Elites Are Fed Up Too</h3><p>In the late fall of 2011, right about the time that Chinese social media was about to revolt over air pollution, the Broad Air Conditioning Company in Changsha, Hunan province, made a marketing error. In hopes of juicing up sales for its high-end air purifiers, the company decided to reveal one of its most exacting customers: the Chinese government. In an advertisement, Broad announced that it had placed more than 200 such pollution-fighting filters in the very centers of Chinese power, including the Great Hall of the People, the Zhongnanhai leadership compound, and even the office of then-President Hu Jintao.</p><p>Needless to say, the ad didn't go over well with China's government or its furious social media users, and it was pulled. But the air purifiers? Presumably they're still scrubbing away, making Beijing's air safe for its leaders.</p><p>Privileged Chinese have the means to protect themselves from pollution, and for many, the solution is simple: flee. "North China's air quality is driving away wealthy citizens and making it hard to attract and retain global executives," Bloomberg's Bullard said. According to <a href="http://www.hurun.net/EN/ArticleShow.aspx?nid=1502" target="_blank">one study</a>, 64 percent of Chinese millionaires have already emigrated or are planning to. Among the most cited reasons: pollution, food safety, and educational opportunities.</p><p>It's an economic and a public relations disaster, and it's not just the rich and powerful who are leaving. In 2014, 274,000 Chinese citizens were studying in U.S. universities, and less than half of them will return to China. Job opportunities and other socioeconomic factors play a role. But so does pollution and its effect on children.</p><p>It's not clear whether reducing pollution will bring them back, but China's air filter-possessing leaders know personally why large numbers of the country's increasingly wealthy citizens want to leave, so they're willing to give antipollution measures a try.</p><h3>Headway on Conservation</h3><p>The horror-show photos of China's winter smog that can be seen on websites and in newspapers remind people of the toll that fossil fuels are taking on China. But if there's a downside to such photos, it's that they tend to put the focus on the energy-generation side of China's pollution problem rather than on the consumption side. Ultimately, pollution is caused by energy use, whether by factories making iPhones, buses transporting students to school, or homes being heated during the north China winter.</p><p>For the Chinese government, now committed to huge reductions in energy-related emissions, efficiency measures are enticing, low-hanging fruit—much easier to implement than, say, converting coal-burning power plants to renewables. "A lot of the progress in energy efficiency can be achieved via low-cost, no-cost measures," said <a href="/node/8771">Barbara Finamore</a>, Asia Director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "There's a tremendous amount of energy wasted through poor management, lack of training, things like that. And that's where the biggest bang for the buck is."</p><p>Up to 26 percent of energy use in China is related to powering buildings. That's less than the global average of 40 percent, but China's number is set to grow: The country's building floor space and energy consumption are both projected to double by 2050. That, in itself, is reason to question whether China can meet its new greenhouse gas commitments. But it's even more frightening when you take into account that only five percent of China's buildings currently meet the country's meager building energy-conservation standards. Fortunately, the government began spending money on energy-efficient-home retrofit projects back in the 1990s, converting millions of square feet of leaky, poorly insulated homes into green ones. Meanwhile, factories that depended on coal burning for energy are being moved to other, cleaner-burning power sources. "Energy efficiency is the cheapest, cleanest, and fastest energy resource there is," Finamore said. "And they're really using it."</p><p>These trends, however shaky, suggest that China is beginning to turn in the right direction. Bloomberg's Bullard believes that China is inherently capable of maintaining its momentum. "Only a country with China's level of coordination and commitment could build so much fossil fuel-generation capacity so quickly," he said. "And now the economic development that extraordinary power output created gives China the wealth, wherewithal, and willpower to change its path."<span class="cube"></span></p>Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - 11:09amChinaFileThe Other Chinahttp://www.chinafile.com/node/13731
<p>Writers Michael Meyer and Ian Buruma engage in a discussion co-sponsoted by <a href="http://www.chinafile.com/library/nyrb-china-archive" target="_blank"><em>The New York Review of Books</em></a> centered on Meyer's new book, <a href="http://www.chinafile.com/library/excerpts/view-wasteland" target="_blank"><em>In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland and the Transformation of Rural China</em></a>, which combines immersion journalism, memoir, and historical research to create a portrait of the momentous changes underway in China's often-overlooked countryside.<span class="cube"></span></p><p><iframe src="http://asiasociety.org/sites/all/themes/asiasociety/jwplayer/jwplayer.php?file=video/150218_meyer_manchuria_full.mp4&img=files/video_library/thumbs/150218_meyer_video_full.jpg&url=/video/other-china-michael-meyer-and-ian-buruma-complete" frameborder="0" height="335" width="570"></iframe></p>Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - 10:40amChinaFileA Vital Partnershiphttp://www.chinafile.com/node/13711
<p>As the two largest global emitters of greenhouse gases, China and the United States share the challenge of transforming each of their current fossil fuel–based energy systems into clean twenty-first-century energy systems that remain cornerstones of our vigorous economies while protecting our shared climate, along with our clean air, clean water, and other precious natural resources. This report outlines the types of activities already underway involving agencies in the California state government as well as California-based non-governmental actors and China. As California has taken on some of the functions of a nation-state (in the sense of forming direct relations with foreign governments in sectors of key interest to Californians), it has also helped create something of a state model for subnational international cooperation on climate change and energy issues. We think it is a model worth studying, supporting, and celebrating on both sides of the U.S.-China divide. If we are going to collectively arrive at any kind of meaningful solution to the urgent challenge of climate change, it will most certainly involve active participation by both subnational governmental entities and non-governmental, civil society institutions.</p>
Wednesday, March 4, 2015 - 7:30amChinaFileWhy Has This Environmental Documentary Gone Viral on China’s Internet?http://www.chinafile.com/node/13671
<p>[Updated: March 6, 2015] Our friends at <em>Foreign Policy</em> hit the nail on the head by headlining writer Yiqin Fu's Monday story "<a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/02/chinas-national-conversation-on-pollution-has-finally-begun-chai-jing-documentary/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">China's National Conversation about Pollution Has Finally Begun</a>." What happened? Well, in the last weekend of February, the feature-length Chinese documentary "Under the Dome" was released, first on the website of the state-run <em>People's Daily</em> newspaper, then on Youku, Tudou, and Tencent. (Watch a subtitled version on YouTube above and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6X2uwlQGQM" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">here</a>). The film, which narrator and veteran China Central Television journalist Chai Jing said was inspired by her fear that pollution might have been responsible for her daughter's operation for a tumor at birth, was viewed more than <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/05/under-the-dome-china-pollution-chai-jing" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">200 milllion</a> times—and has since been taken off most major Chinese web sites. Our colleagues at the Chinese-language website China-U.S. Dialogue ran their liveliest conversation yet, drawing tens of thousands of comments about Chai's film via <a href="http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MjM5NDE4OTg3Nw==&mid=204019453&idx=1&sn=b2031f60e373dd69ee93eb513c16c691&scene=1&key=8ea74966bf01cfb6644aa42555b873d19cea674ff024919262c529e4dd2aeeb00c5ac954e75162e0cd876b69f79e179f&ascene=1&uin=NjI4NjEyMDAw&devicetype=webwx&version=70000001&pass_ticket=3BaSBykByE2XLVvBfSZsCgkm8midz0wuGDxXE%2FvUy8K9yGq2h75G5j%2BUDTfiUdng" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">WeChat</a>. In a country where media is tightly controlled, it is surprising, if not unprecedented, to see the unimpeded release of a self-funded investigative documentary about one of the most sensitive topics challenging China’s growth, especially when the film is critical of more than a few government agencies and is circulating so widely just ahead of the annual convening of <a href="http://blogs.barrons.com/asiastocks/2015/03/01/chinas-foul-air-in-focus-ahead-of-the-national-peoples-congress/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">China’s main legislative body</a>. Following below are contributor reactions to what has been described at China's "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnjx6KETmi4" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Inconvenient Truth</a>." —<em>The Editors</em></p>
Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - 2:35pmChinaFileCan Market Mechanisms Clear China’s Air?http://www.chinafile.com/node/13626
<p>The Chinese government recently responded to rising public discontent over environmental degradation by introducing tougher rules for industrial emissions.</p><p>Meanwhile, a non-governmental organization and a state-run newspaper are coordinating a parallel fight against industrial pollution based on market mechanisms.</p><p>Trusting that the equities market can push companies to do good, the environmental track records of publicly listed companies are now being compiled and publicized by the Beijing-based NGO Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE) and the state-run <em>Securities Times</em> newspaper.</p><p>The first data report released on January 6 focuses on 20 companies listed on mainland, Hong Kong, or overseas stock markets whose facilities or factories were potential violators of the government's new emissions standards. IPE and <em>Securities Times</em> researchers picked the 20 from an initial list of about 1,000 companies and have been updating the list every Tuesday since.</p><p><div class="cboxes blank_template wide2 grid-4 img-yes logo-no"><div class="cb-head"> <h3><a href="/reporting-opinion/environment">Environment</a></h3> <span class="date">09.03.14</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon4.gif"></span></div><div class="cb-link"><a href="/reporting-opinion/environment/china-air-daily"></a></div><div class="cb-img"><a href="/reporting-opinion/environment/china-air-daily"><img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/blank_template/system/beijingair.png?itok=2Q1FF3K2" alt="" /></a></div><div class="cb-cont"> <h2><a href="/reporting-opinion/environment/china-air-daily">China Air Daily</a></h2> <span class="authors"><a href="/reporting-opinion/environment/china-air-daily">Michael Zhao</a></span> <div class="inner-content"> <p>Beijing’s air pollution regularly makes international headlines. But exactly how bad is the air in the Chinese capital, home to more than 21 million people? That’s the question China Air Daily strives to answer—in pictures we take every single day from the same spot.Air...</p> </div> </div></div></p><p>Names included on the debut list were the central government's metals giant Aluminum Corp. of China Ltd., also known as Chinalco; Boshan-headquartered glassmaker Shandong Jinjing Science & Technology Stock Co.; and Urumqi-based Guanghui Energy Co., a processor of petrochemicals and liquefied natural gas.</p><p>IPE Director Ma Jun said the list is designed to help stock investors evaluate companies from an environmental risk perspective in hopes they'll see a financial incentive to backing responsible companies. The hope is that companies will put more work into pollution prevention to please investors.</p><p> <div class="node-video author-inkaman odd cboxes video wide2 grid-4 img-yes logo-no" id="node-video-3724"><!-- cboxes wide2 logo-no img-yes grid-4 article --> <div class="cb-head"> <h3> Environment</h3> <span class="date">01.23.15</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon9.gif"></span> </div> <div class="cb-link"><a href="/reporting-opinion/environment/chinas-air-pollution-tipping-point"></a></div> <div class="cb-img"><img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/video/system/beijing-swpie-2009png.jpg?itok=wLRtI6uj" alt="" /></div> <div class="cb-cont"> <h2><a href="/reporting-opinion/environment/chinas-air-pollution-tipping-point" title="China’s Air Pollution: The Tipping Point">China’s Air Pollution: The Tipping Point</a></h2> <span class="authors"> <div class="field field-name-field-common-contributors field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden"> <div class="field-items"> <span >Michael Zhao</span> </div> </div> </span> <div class="inner-content"> <div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"> Last November, Beijing saw a stretch of solidly clear skies and the Chinese media coined a phrase to describe them: APEC blue. After the diplomats and businesspeople gathered in China’s capital for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum... </div> </div> </div></div></p><p>Stock investors "care about the environment, but they care more about the costs of environmental issues," he said. "If a pollution problem can't be fixed, investors will eventually have to consider the possible risks."</p><p>Chinese companies have faced a higher risk of being hit with a fine for polluting since January 1, when the government raised the bar for industrial emission standards by revising the national Environmental Protection Law. One change means a company can be fined daily for a pollution problem until it's fixed. The government also added environmental evaluations to routine job performance assessments of local officials in hopes bureaucrats will want to do more to protect the nation's land, air, and water.</p><p>It's unclear what, if any, long-term effects the investor data project and revised emissions standards will have in the fight against pollution. Some environmental experts have applauded the initiatives, while others say they're withholding applause while waiting to see what happens next.</p><p>Some observers argue that IPE-<em>Securities Times</em> project in itself will have little impact on investor behavior and pollution unless the government strictly enforces the revised law.</p><p>But if the law is fully implemented, Ma said, pollution fines "will increase a lot, raising financial risks for companies. That will be the real risk the capital market is looking at."</p><h3>Investor Interest?</h3><p>The use of market mechanisms to goad a company into cleaning up its act is new to China, but the approach is common in many other countries. Firms whose pollution sins have been exposed to the investment community have faced lawsuits, business losses, or slumping stock values around the world.</p><p>In China, Ma said, investors have shown general interest in previous IPE reports about listed companies with pollution problems. He said the IPE looked at releasing lists of polluting companies several years ago, but held back while the government revised the law.</p><p>However, it's rare for a Chinese stock investor to make decisions based on a company's environmental performance, Ma said. An analysis of stock market trends within six weeks of the first IPE-<em>Securities Times</em> report suggests the data had little or no immediate impact on share prices for targeted companies, he said.</p><p>"The overall [Chinese stock] market is in good shape now," said a research team member who asked not to be named. "Some companies that were high on the pollution risk list have seen their share prices perform very well."</p><p>The researcher said that firms are ranked according to a risk index based on data from local government environmental agency websites and company data. Information may include the timing, densities, and volumes of factory emissions, along with data on past or current violations of pollution standards.</p><p>For example, emissions data from environmental authorities in the southern city of Zhangzhou was reviewed by researchers who added to their polluter list the Ningbo-headquartered, Shanghai-listed glass manufacturer Kibing Group. Officials say nitrogen oxide emissions at a company plant in Zhangzhou were about twice the legal limits for several weeks recently. Residents angered by the pollution protested in mid-December.</p><p>Despite the negative publicity, Kibing's share price has changed little since the controversy erupted. The stock barely budged during the five weeks that the company ranked high on the IPE-Securities Times list, bourse records show.</p><p>Zhang Wang, director of a research office at the <em>Securities Times</em>, said researchers plan to fine-tune future reports by considering comments from affected companies, including reactions to any charges of legal violations. Moreover, he said, in the future water pollution data will be added to supplement what's now a report that focuses on air emissions.</p><p>Some firms on the list of 20 polluters were quick to respond, Zhang said, while others asked to have their names removed. The operator of Shanghai Shenergy's power plant, Shanghai Xinghuo Thermo Power Co. Ltd., for example, submitted fresh data after it was cited for excessive emissions in an IPE-<em>Securities Times</em> report.</p><p>Most of the companies on the polluters list, however, have said nothing. Their silence mirrors the lack of interest in environmental concerns in some investment circles.</p><p>One fund manager who asked that his name not be used said he does not factor environmental concerns into his investment decisions, even though he cares about the environment. He said his attitude would change only for a company slapped with a major fine for violating environmental rules.</p><p>Ma said investors generally see China as a land with low fines for emissions violations, which to investors means companies can pollute without facing serious financial risks.</p><p>Guo Peiyuan, a general manager at the corporate responsibility consultancy SynTao Co. Ltd. in Beijing, said institutional and individual investors in China care most about how pollution-fine risks affect share prices. But since companies are rarely penalized for pollution, he said, many investors think environmental problems have little impact on stock value.</p><p>The changed environmental law, however, has the potential to change investor attitudes since "uncertainty is the market's top concern," said Guo. Not only did the revision raise fine levels, he said, but it also cleared the way for environmental-damage lawsuits that may target polluting companies.</p><p>And the IPE-<em>Securities Times</em> reports will help market players interpret government data and react to the risks facing listed companies, Guo said.</p><p>Among the first market players with a chance to see how the new law affects investments are holders of Hong Kong-listed shares in China Glass Holdings Ltd., which was recently fined for violating air emissions rules. Environmental authorities in the eastern province of Shandong slapped the glass maker with a 1.9 million yuan fine for breaking the law over a 19-day period ending February 3. <span class="cube"></span></p>Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - 11:49amChinaFileThe Word That Broke the Chinese Internethttp://www.chinafile.com/node/13691
<p>It might be gibberish, but it’s also a sign of the times. The word <em>duang</em>, pronounced “dwong,” is spreading like wildfire throughout China’s active Internet—even though 1.3 billion Chinese people still haven’t figured out what it means. In fact, its particular combination of sounds can’t even be represented with China’s existing writing system. Notwithstanding, since February 24 it has <a href="http://s.weibo.com/wb/duang&xsort=time&timescope=custom:2015-02-24:2015-02-27&Refer=g">appeared</a> over 8.4 million times on Weibo, China’s massive Twitter-like microblogging platform and spawned a synonymous <a href="http://weibo.com/p/1008084c2eee46ea12b4656d70c6b75e132e9b?k=duang&from=trendtop_api?refer=index_hot_new#_rnd1425069499293">hashtag</a>, still top-trending on Weibo as of February 27, with more than 100,000 mentions. New mentions and iterations continue to roll in.</p><p></p><p>The story of <em>duang</em> started with film star Jackie Chan, a Hong Kong actor famous both in mainland China and abroad for his often-silly action flicks. U.S. filmgoers may be unaware that Chan has burnished the revenue from his cinematic empire with product sponsorship, most notably for Chinese herbal shampoo <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Bawang-Anti-hair-Shampoo-Professional-Conditioner/dp/B009ZOV2OA/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1425070425&sr=8-3&keywords=bawang+shampoo">Bawang</a>. Chan has been the shampoo’s spokesperson for years, but on February 24, what looked like a new ad <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ModL1vD1A7U" target="_blank">appeared</a> on Youku, a video streaming site, featuring Chan. “It makes your hair so black, shiny, and moisturized,” Chan appears to say of the product. “It’s just … it’s just … <em>duang</em>!” he then declared, as if describing the sound reverberating from his flowing tresses.</p><p>In fact, the video was a fake advertisement that remixed actual footage of Chan with a voice-over. But the facts hardly mattered to a bored netizenry. “Have you duang’ed today?” <a href="http://weibo.com/1134796120/C6fqetUJW?type=comment">asked</a> one user. “I’ve already been brainwashed by duang!” <a href="http://weibo.com/1642635773/C6g8dzC9m?type=comment">wrote</a> another. Some have even circulated a <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-31689148" target="_blank">new Chinese character</a> to represent the word, comprising the two characters of Chan’s Chinese name.</p><p>Perhaps it’s the tilt of the planetary axis. With the northern hemisphere mired in a nasty winter—it’s currently <a href="http://www.weather.com/weather/today/l/CHXX0008:1:CH">28 degrees Fahrenheit</a> in Beijing—Internet users around the world seem content to occupy themselves with viral trivia, be it a silly word in China, or the color of a dress, which <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/28/business/a-simple-question-about-a-dress-and-the-world-weighs-in.html">swept</a> the U.S. Internet on February 27 as Americans debated its hue. There used to be a time when Chinese netizens <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/10/22/how-to-say-truthiness-in-chinese/" target="_blank">invented</a> new words or slang as part of a constant effort to keep ahead of government censors. But the latter, particularly over recent months, seem to be winning, expanding the zone of forbidden speech and driving the noncompliant further into the shadows. Perhaps it was inevitable that a new word would emerge that simply meant nothing at all.<span class="cube"></span></p>Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - 11:15amChinaFileMigrant Hairhttp://www.chinafile.com/node/13246
<p>This photo series of Chinese hairdressers was made in the spring of 2012, in the city center of Chengdu in Sichuan province. There, some <a href="http://www.sc.gov.cn/10462/10883/11066/2012/6/18/10214323.shtml" rel="nofollow">16 percent</a> of the city’s <a href="http://data.stats.gov.cn/search/keywordlist2?keyword=%E6%88%90%E9%83%BD" rel="nofollow">nearly 12</a> million residents are recent immigrants, like the individuals photographed in this project.</p>
<p>Each portrait shows a young hairdresser who moved to Chengdu in search of new employment opportunities; the portraits were taken near the salons where the hairdressers work and they are paired with photographs of the places they live. Jobs that come with accommodations are particularly prized by the new arrivals, though, if an employer offers a room or a bed in his or her own home, it is often shared with other members of the staff.</p>
Tuesday, March 3, 2015 - 12:00amChinaFileVillage Acupuncturehttp://www.chinafile.com/node/13541
<p class="dropcap">On a bamboo-covered mountaintop the mud-walled houses of Diaotan village are just barely visible through the thick fog that often shrouds this remote hamlet in China’s Zhejiang province. Worn but sturdy earthen walls still enclose the largest structure of Diaotan, the ancestral hall, or <em>citang</em>. Inside, a few lanterns and red couplets hang above a stone courtyard covered with moss and weeds.</p><p>Xu Tiantian, an architect from Beijing who has come here to help restore old houses, marvels at the serene landscape of bamboo and five-hundred-year-old trees. “It’s like the <em>taohuayuan</em> [peach blossom garden],” she says, referring to the 4th century story that describes “the Chinese version of a Utopia hidden in the mountains.”</p><p>“You think this place is beautiful?” asks an elderly villager who only gives his surname as Jiang. “It’s not beautiful at all!”</p><p>But the architects and a team of professors from Tsinghua University, Central Academy of Fine Arts, and the University of Hong Kong who have come here at the invitation of the local government of Songyang County think otherwise. They are trying to implement small-scale design interventions and renovations aimed at reviving dying villages and turning them into destinations for tourists and artists. They are in many ways working against time, as China’s villagers are being encouraged or even forced to move to urban areas as part of a government effort to transform China from an agricultural society to a predominantly urban one.</p><p>Although nearly half of China’s 1.4 billion people are still classified as rural, the government has recently laid out ambitious plans to move around 250 million villagers into cities and towns by 2025, pushing the national urbanization rate towards 70%. In doing so, they hope to reduce entrenched rural poverty and transform the economy from its current investment-driven model to a more consumption-powered one. As villagers move to apartment housing, the logic goes, they will spend more on services and other modern conveniences like appliances and utilities. But this also threatens thousands of villages with extinction.</p><p><div class="visual-box photo-object grid-8 p-left pull-left"> <div class="visual-image-box"> <img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/scale_photo_inset/public/lunch-meeting_2.jpg?itok=mM2dwDEM" alt="" /> <p class="img-credit field field-name-field-common-system-credit field-type-text field-label-hidden"> Andrew Stokols </p> </div> <p class= "img-caption field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"> Xu Tiantian, left, and Luo Deyin, second from left, meet with officials from Songyang County. A map of the proposed project area in Pingtian village rests on the table. </p> </div></p><p>“We need to expand our concept of tourism,” says Luo Deyin, a professor of architecture at Tsinghua University who is leading the overall planning for the project. “It’s not just eating and sleeping, but many activities like cultural and creative industries that can be put into these villages.”</p><p>At a meeting with county officials the night before, Xu, Luo, and several architecture students presented their renderings of another nearby village, Pingtian, envisioning additions like glass enclosures to provide shelter for exposed earthen courtyards. Their plan calls for transforming old homes, some abandoned, into exhibition spaces and a gift shop for local crafts, and even residences for artists. Part of the design strategy involves creating public areas such as a villagers’ center and library by linking small structures to create larger contiguous spaces.</p><p>“This is one of the most challenging projects I’ve worked on,” says Xu, Founding Principal of DnA _Design and Architecture, best known for the Songzhuang Art Museum outside Beijing. “We have to abandon the tricks of our profession and learn from the beginning with local builders.” For example, the new designs called for inserting more windows to bring light into structures that had been used as storehouses. But there is a delicate balance that must be struck in restoring earthen-walled, or <em>hangtu</em>, homes because any additions that increase the load could cause walls to collapse. Earthen walls are cheaper than brick but they keep the house warm in the winter and cool in the summer.</p><p><div class="visual-box photo-object grid-4 p- right pull- right"> <div class="visual-image-box"> <img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/scale_photo_inset/public/img_4111_0.jpg?itok=tNrQWZqS" alt="" /> <p class="img-credit field field-name-field-common-system-credit field-type-text field-label-hidden"> Courtesy of DnA_ Design and Architecture </p> </div> <p class= "img-caption field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"> Artists rendering of a proposed art gallery in a restored wood-beam and earthen-walled structure, Pingtian. </p> </div></p><p>The idea of using small-scale design interventions to affect larger transformation of Chinese villages recalls the “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/urban-acupuncture-community-localised-renewal-projects">urban acupuncture</a>” concept that some designers have championed as a way to spur beneficial changes in cities. In Medellin, Colombia, for example, libraries and small museums have been built in slum communities in the hope that they will revitalize formerly neglected areas. While the impact of such interventions is hard to determine empirically, such projects can serve as a powerful signal to residents and officials that these communities are worth investing in.</p><p>In Songyang, local officials hope to turn several villages into destinations for tourists, but they also want to avoid the rampant commercialization that has characterized other similar attempts in China: many towns across the country have become cluttered with vendors selling the same tacky trinkets, crowding out the local culture that they aimed to preserve in the first place.</p><p>“We want to preserve the local qualities of Pingtian,” says Wang Jun, the county chief of Songyang, an energetic man in his early forties. “We want to make sure the materials used are not too foreign to the style here.”</p><p>Interestingly enough, it’s the architectural history experts who are pushing for a more flexible approach to preservation. “In order to think about the tourist market, there must be modern facilities here,” says Luo, a renowned expert on China’s vernacular rural architecture. “How many is up to [the county], but there must be some.”</p><p>Luo has spent much of his career writing books and articles on the architecture and history of China’s villages. His efforts to catalogue and preserve the immense variety of rural culture and architecture in China recall the legacy of Liang Sicheng, the famous Chinese architect of the early 20th century who was the first to systematically document China’s architectural history at a time when civil war, the end of the Qing Dynasty, and Western influence caused many historic structures to fall into disrepair.</p><p><div class="visual-box photo-object grid-4 p- right pull- right"> <div class="visual-image-box"> <img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/scale_photo_inset/public/img_2704_0.jpg?itok=QJHK_Udz" alt="" /> <p class="img-credit field field-name-field-common-system-credit field-type-text field-label-hidden"> Courtesy of DnA_ Design and Architecture </p> </div> <p class= "img-caption field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"> In the early stages of project work, a building in Pingtian Village (平田村) shows the exposed wood beam construction designed by a team of architects from Tsinghua University, University of Hong Kong, and Chinese Central Academy of Fine Arts. Because earthen-walled construction doesn't support much weight, architects are reconstructing some of the buildings with new wood frames. </p> </div></p><p>But unlike Liang, who was mainly concerned with monumental architecture and imperial building traditions, Luo is interested in the architecture of common villages that varies widely from region to region. Originally from a rural area of southern Guangdong province, Luo has lived in Beijing ever since attending college there but spends much of his time on breaks and weekends working in remote villages.</p><p>Not content to merely record the history of China’s disappearing villages from the comforts of the ivory tower, Luo has also developed renovation plans and designs for restoring traditional structures in over a hundred villages. His work has taken him from the rice terraces of the Hani minority in Yunnan to historic Ming-dynasty garrison towns in northern Hebei province outside Beijing. In many villages, he has advised officials on how to develop tourism while maintaining the quality of traditional buildings.</p><p>“Many villages have the potential to become tourist destinations,” says Luo, “but especially the ones within an hour or two drive from a major city, these will have a much easier time drawing tourists.”</p><p>Songyang is a two-hour drive from Wenzhou, the prosperous coastal city whose residents are known for their business acumen and diaspora communities in Europe and the United States. But Songyang is also far off the well-worn tourist trail that many foreigners traverse in search of “authentic” villages—the most popular of which are the water towns near Suzhou in Jiangsu province, and the Huizhou villages of southern Anhui province. Within five years, however, a new high-speed rail station will make Songyang much more accessible.</p><p><div class="visual-box photo-object grid-8 p-left pull-left"> <div class="visual-image-box"> <img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/scale_photo_inset/public/img_4110_0.jpg?itok=UPBDQF1Q" alt="" /> <p class="img-credit field field-name-field-common-system-credit field-type-text field-label-hidden"> Courtesy of DnA_ Design and Architecture </p> </div> <p class= "img-caption field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"> Artists rendering of a proposed art gallery in a restored wood-beam and earthen-walled structure, Pingtian. </p> </div></p><p>In addition to his work in Songyang, Luo is one of the experts leading a national initiative of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development to designate historic villages, in hopes of building stronger protection for local architecture. As of January 2015, there are <a href="http://www.academia.edu/10389723/Traditional_Chinese_Villages_Bulletin_-_2015_Jan">2,555 listed villages</a> nationwide, with 50 of them in Songyang County.</p><p>Luo is a realist. He acknowledges that many villages in China will have no future if they fail to develop tourist infrastructure. In this sense, his approach to preservation differs somewhat from certain activists and academics of the <a href="/node/9896">New Rural Reconstruction Movement</a> who advocate a return to farming and village life as a larger antidote to the ills of modern urban China.</p><p><div class="cboxes article wide2 grid-4 img-yes logo-no"><div class="cb-head"> <h3><a href="/reporting-opinion/earthbound-china">Earthbound China</a></h3> <span class="date">12.15.14</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon4.gif"></span></div><div class="cb-link"><a href="/reporting-opinion/earthbound-china/map-chinas-back-land-efforts"></a></div><div class="cb-img"><a href="/reporting-opinion/earthbound-china/map-chinas-back-land-efforts"><img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/8636.jpg?itok=p_5O0MYw" alt="" /></a></div><div class="cb-cont"> <h2><a href="/reporting-opinion/earthbound-china/map-chinas-back-land-efforts">A Map of China’s Back-to-the-Land Efforts</a></h2> <span class="authors"><a href="/reporting-opinion/earthbound-china/map-chinas-back-land-efforts">Leah Thompson</a></span> <div class="inner-content"> <p>In our short film “Down to the Countryside,” Sun Yunfan and I follow Ou Ning, an artist and curator who moved from Beijing to the village of Bishan in rural Anhui province in 2013, where he experiments with preserving and revitalizing local heritage, developing the rural...</p> </div> </div></div></p><p>“At this stage, tourism is the most effective and the easiest way to make an old village survive amidst rapid urbanization,” says Luo with a tone of urgency that suggests an eagerness to find whatever works to help preserve villages. “Tourism brings people from the outside into old villages and creates opportunities for contact between citizens and villagers. Ultimately I believe this will help change the villagers’ value of cultural heritage, from wanting to destroy their old houses to wanting to protect them.”</p><p>In many villages, however, the outmigration of residents makes it hard to imagine how they will ever recover any of their former vitality. In Diaotan, accessible only by one narrow road that winds up the mountain from the valley below, an estimated 100 people still reside there despite an official population of 400, according to a township official. Most of those who remain are elderly and children too young to work. And, as the sentiments expressed by some of the villagers show, many residents don’t think their crumbling old houses are anything worth celebrating.</p><p>“Once Professor Luo is done working here, hopefully some of our young people will choose to come back and open up small businesses,” says County Chief Wang Jun.</p><p>But at the same time, large-scale relocation projects underway across much of the country undercut this aspiration. Villagers are moving to new apartments in cities and towns faster than tourism can be developed to draw them back. Just down the road from Pingtian, new apartment blocks rise up from fallow fields. And even the village restoration plans will require some families to give up their hillside homes and relocate to apartments in the valley below. While visiting Diaotan, county officials discussed how many families would be required to move so that some of their houses can be renovated for other purposes.</p><p><div class="visual-box photo-object grid-4 p- right pull- right"> <div class="visual-image-box"> <img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/scale_photo_inset/public/pingtian_luo_wang-inspect_0.jpg?itok=-YQ3V0SQ" alt="" /> <p class="img-credit field field-name-field-common-system-credit field-type-text field-label-hidden"> Andrew Stokols </p> </div> <p class= "img-caption field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"> Wang Jun, left, the county chief of Songyang, points to structures requiring renovation in the hilltop village of Pingtian. </p> </div></p><p>In Pingtian, I join Luo, Wang, and other officials and architects to inspect the village, followed by a simple but hearty lunch of rural staples: boiled radish, steamed bamboo, pork blood stew, and rice served from a wooden barrel. Wang presides over an impromptu meeting, looking at a map sprawled out across the table, and exhorts everyone gathered in the small room, “Let’s work hard to meet our timetable and have the first phase done by next May. Can we do that?” The county finance chief nods his head and promises that the money will be available in time.</p><p>Money, however necessary, will not be all that it takes to bring these nearly deserted villages back to life. “Even if you give them money,” says Luo, “villagers don’t think they have the obligation to protect their old houses. This is the biggest problem in village preservation.”</p><p>Successful preservation work in China involves a complex interplay of factors, including the existence of intact historic buildings and scenic landscapes, supportive local officials, and proximity of nearby cities. Often, the very remoteness that has allowed old buildings to survive is also the obstacle that makes tourism development so difficult.</p><p><div class="visual-box photo-object grid-6 p- right pull- right"> <div class="visual-image-box"> <img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/scale_photo_inset/public/diaotan_mist.jpg?itok=6XEPCdQX" alt="" /> <p class="img-credit field field-name-field-common-system-credit field-type-text field-label-hidden"> Andrew Stokols </p> </div> <p class= "img-caption field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"> An earthen-walled residence in the hilltop village of Diaotan (吊坛村), shrouded in mist </p> </div></p><p>In Huangkeng, a nearby hilltop enclave that has begun to attract artists because of its panoramic views, a tour bus has deposited a group of middle-aged amateur painters in the village for the afternoon. But they have no place to eat or sleep, so they will return to the city afterward.</p><p>“Why don’t you build a restaurant or guesthouse here?” suggests Wang to a villager. “Otherwise the visitors won’t spend much time or money here,” he reasons. It’s a good suggestion, but the resident lacks the resources to expand his offering of tea and snacks, and the trickle of visitors isn’t enough to justify building anything larger in a space that he is currently living in.</p><p>Just then, the architect Xu returns from a hike, excitedly telling Wang that she has found a building that would be suitable for renovating into a small lodge. It’s another earthen-walled structure currently being used as a storehouse for farming equipment and grain. “With the large open ceiling, the space would be perfect,” she exclaims excitedly. Our group is getting ready to depart back to Wenzhou, but Xu decides to stay behind. “Don’t worry about me, it’s so peaceful, I could stay here for a while.” Now she just needs a place to sleep for the night.<span class="cube"></span></p><p><div class="visual-box photo-object grid-8 p-left pull-left"> <div class="visual-image-box"> <img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/scale_photo_inset/public/img_4113_0.jpg?itok=Uq-3zGWW" alt="" /> <p class="img-credit field field-name-field-common-system-credit field-type-text field-label-hidden"> Courtesy of DnA_ Design and Architecture </p> </div> </div></p>Monday, March 2, 2015 - 2:33pmChinaFileKeep in Touch, Nightmanhttp://www.chinafile.com/node/13631
<p>In 1997, Beijing was smaller city, and Keep in Touch, Jamhouse, and Nightman were the hippest venues around. There was no traffic on the ring roads, and if you got tired of Chinese food you might take a trip to Fangzhuang to visit this Italian restaurant that had suddenly appeared (should we go to Fangzhuang tonight, honey)? And the really plugged-in? They might even have heard of this new district called "Sanlitun" that had a couple of upcoming bars like Poachers....</p><p>This week on Sinica, Jeremy and Kaiser are joined by two old friends from the 1990s, Jess Meider (now a professional musician) and Jonathan Ansfield (now a professional journalist). If you're a long-timer in Beijing, or just curious what it used to be like, join us as we look back at youth, music, and share tips on how to do a backflip in a PLA-owned bars.<span class="cube"></span></p><p><div class="cboxes photo_gallery_slideshow wide2 grid-4 img-yes logo-no"><div class="cb-head"> <h3><a href="/reporting-opinion/culture">Culture</a></h3> <span class="date">08.21.12</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon1.gif"></span></div><div class="cb-link"><a href="/reporting-opinion/culture/when-art-happened"></a></div><div class="cb-img"><a href="/reporting-opinion/culture/when-art-happened"><img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/gallery/system/when_art_happened-9.jpg?itok=vOwJS4fR" alt="" /></a></div><div class="cb-cont"> <h2><a href="/reporting-opinion/culture/when-art-happened">When Art Happened</a></h2> <span class="authors"><a href="/reporting-opinion/culture/when-art-happened">Xing Danwen & Leap</a></span> <div class="inner-content"> <p>In the 1990s, there were very few places to hold contemporary art exhibitions, concerts, or even simple gatherings of friends. Nonetheless, some of China’s most celebrated cultural figures—particularly in the fields of art and music—would manage to break their own ground....</p> </div> </div></div></p>Monday, March 2, 2015 - 11:50amChinaFileAre China and Russia Forging a New Ideological Bloc?http://www.chinafile.com/node/13521
<p></p><p>With evidence of ties strengthening between Beijing and Moscow—over energy contracts, the handling of the Ukraine, and their diplomats' stance toward outside interference in internal affairs, especially if it's perceived as coming from Washington—can the world soon expect Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin to cooperate more broadly? Why, or why not, and to what effect? — <em>The Editors</em></p>Friday, February 27, 2015 - 10:11amChinaFileApple Pay Stalled, Frustrated in Chinahttp://www.chinafile.com/node/13506
<p>The central bank, UnionPay bank card service, and e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. are standing up to Apple Inc.'s effort to bring the Apple Pay no-card, no-cash payment system to iPhone users in China.</p>
<p>"Apple is seeking to cooperate with Chinese financial institutions," including banks for the use of Apple Pay, a People's Bank of China (PBOC) official said.</p>
<p>At the same time, the American company has not yet "acknowledged regulators" and as a result "it's unclear whether the product meets the government's requirements" for a commercial operation.</p>
<p>Apple is also struggling with its relationship with UnionPay, China's state-owned credit and debit card system operator. Sources close to the companies said that talks aimed at an agreement that would open China to Apple Pay have stalled.</p>
<p>The central bank official who asked not to be named said regulators have not intervened in negotiations between Apple and UnionPay, which began last year and were reportedly aimed at an agreement by March.</p>
<p>Apple Pay was launched for commercial use in the United States about a month after the September release of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6S handsets. By swiping an iPhone at a checkout counter, an Apple Pay customer in America can complete a transaction quickly through a wireless link to his or her bank account or credit card.</p>
<p>Apple is reportedly working toward expanding this service globally. But it is unclear whether the Apple Pay feature will be allowed in China, one of Apple's biggest markets, anytime soon.</p>
<p>Apple Pay relies on near-field communication (NFC), a wireless system that transmits data from a special chip-equipped smartphone to a bank through a point-of-sale (POS) reader at a checkout counter. A UnionPay-linked NFC system has been around for about two years, letting consumers with Chinese bank accounts shop with smartphones equipped with China Mobile or China Unicom SIM cards.</p>
<p>Separately, some consumers are using smartphones to make payments through quick-response (QR) code systems linked to Alibaba Group's Alipay, Tencent Holdings Ltd.'s WePay, and other mobile application services.</p>
<p>Apple Pay has hit bumps in China despite Apple's efforts to make friends with Alibaba and UnionPay.</p>
<p>Industry observers had hoped for an agreement after Apple CEO Tim Cook and Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma in October separately said their companies were in cooperation talks. Speculation ran high that Apple Pay might find a way to access China by using Alipay instead of UnionPay to process iPhone owner transactions.</p>
<p>Alipay's app uses a fingerprint password that, underscoring their corporate friendship, was jointly developed by Alibaba and Apple, apparently with a view to building a cooperative payment system in the future, said an Alipay employee who requested anonymity. The companies "have stayed in contact and are preparing for several projects," the employee said.</p>
<p>But Alipay has yet to find a way to work around the UnionPay system, which is the sole channel for NFC transactions in China and sets rates for settlement fees paid by merchants. UnionPay's control of this system thus stands in the way of a potential Apple Pay-Alipay deal.</p>
<p>The rate charged by UnionPay to users of the NFC system "is a heavy price to pay for Alipay. We don't have an offline settlement system, and expensive POS equipment is unaffordable to us," said the Alipay source.</p>
<p>Chen Jianwei, director of the mobile finance department of Zhongyintong Payment Co., a UnionPay affiliate that provides payment services, said Alipay is doing no more than "supporting offline payments in some grocery stores and vending machines using QR codes."</p>
<h3>Standards and Profits</h3>
<p>UnionPay is holding its ground despite a November agreement whereby Apple started accepting consumer payments through UnionPay at its stores in China. UnionPay's NFC system is indeed "technologically compatible with Apple Pay," said one analyst.</p>
<p>To qualify for access to any NFC system in China, according to regulators with the central bank, Apple Pay must comply with a central bank rule that restricts electronic payment systems to those using chips that meet a technical standard called PBOC 3.0. A source familiar with Apple Pay said iPhone chips that drive the payment system do not fully comply with this standard.</p>
<p>Indeed, regulators who studied Apple Pay raised concerns about compliance with Chinese regulations and security standards.</p>
<p>The Chinese government has also told Apple that as a condition for Apple Pay the company must open a mainland data center to house all Chinese customer-related information tied to Apply Pay clients, said an official at the central bank. This rule is in step with the country's data security standards, which are designed to "prevent data leaks" and keep the Chinese payment system running smoothly if technical problems arise at a data center overseas.</p>
<p>Some industry watchers say Apple is also facing headwinds because UnionPay does not want to lose the power it has over financial transactions.</p>
<p>"Letting Apple Pay enter China will have a profound impact" on the payment market, said a financial sector source. "For UnionPay, cooperating with Apple means opening its settlement system. It would be hard to say who's in control.</p>
<p>"UnionPay definitely wants to keep a grip on the system."</p>
<p>Sources close to the talks between Apple and Chinese banks with which it's negotiating say these talks are revolving around how the American company might cooperate with UnionPay. The talks, which started late last year, involve at least eight banks including China Merchants Bank, Bank of China, China Construction Bank, and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.</p>
<p>The talks have also hit snags over profit-sharing issues, according to sources.</p>
<p>Apple Pay in the United States charges 0.15 percent of the 2 percent fee paid by merchants for each credit card payment, as well as a half-cent for each debit card payment, according to the company.</p>
<p>The National Development and Reform Commission, China's top economic planner, says merchants can be charged between 0.38 percent and 1.25 percent for each credit or debit card transaction. Currently, 70 percent of these fees go to <span>the card issuer, 20 percent to the acquiring bank which processes the card payment, and 10 percent to UnionPay.</span></p>
<p>"Apple Pay's 0.15 percent fee charge is too high for China," said a bank source who asked not to be named.</p>
<p>China Merchants Bank, whose clientele is said to generally include more young adults than other banks, appears more willing than other institutions to cooperate with Apple, the person said.</p>
<p>Banks that are bigger than Merchants "have mature POS markets and they don't have to relinquish such a large share of their profits just for a payment service that's in vogue," said a source at one of China's biggest state banks. "It won't give a big bank any significant advantage. How many customers would come get a bank card just for Apple Pay? I wouldn't expect many."</p>
<p>Alipay charges merchants 0.7 percent to 1.2 percent per each transaction, while WeChat Wallet charges 0.6 percent. Smaller players charge less.</p>
<p><span>These payment services "don't follow the fee standards set by banks, so their pricing varies a lot," said an employee of a large bank who works in the electronic banking department. "But in general it's quite low." <span class="cube"></span></span></p>
Wednesday, February 25, 2015 - 3:03pmChinaFileThe Sun Kingshttp://www.chinafile.com/node/13216
<p>In 1992, Shi Zhengrong completed his doctorate and found himself an expert in a field that wasn’t quite ready for him. He’d studied physics at Australia’s University of New South Wales, focusing on crystalline technology, the basic scientific building block of photovoltaic solar power. This knowledge, however, did not yet have much real-world application. Shi, originally from China, thought setting up a Chinese restaurant in Sydney was his best idea. As he told an audience in Hong Kong in 2008, his wife vetoed the restaurant idea and convinced him to look for work more closely related to his studies. He was able to stay in solar, working first at an academic post in Sydney—but real success followed after he started his own company. Shi returned to China and, with the help of local officials in the city of Wuxi, founded solar panel maker Suntech in 2001.<sup id="fnr1"><a href="#fn1">1</a></sup></p><p>{book, 11626}</p><p>Suntech’s growth was impressive. Within a decade of its founding, it went from an unknown start-up to the world’s largest producer of photovoltaic solar modules—a corporate success that seemingly underscored China’s newfound dominance of the clean-tech world.</p><p>Suntech’s hometown of Wuxi is, by Chinese standards, a midsized city, though its population of more than six million people makes it larger than any U.S. city except New York. It is not far from Shanghai (a high-speed train now makes the journey in forty-five minutes) and lies in the Yangtze River Delta, a region that has proven to be fertile ground for China’s economic growth. It is a particularly entrepreneurial part of the country, and officials there welcomed businesses and encouraged Suntech’s wide-ranging ambitions.</p><p>Inexpensive products were key to Suntech’s growth. The company had good technology, though it was in no sense on the leading edge of innovation. Indeed, China’s success in solar came from using technology developed beginning in the 1950s at Bell Laboratories in the United States. Bell Labs, which functioned almost as a national laboratory even though it was owned by telephone monopoly AT&T, was at the forefront of the development of semiconductors, and solar power was an offshoot of that effort. Bell Labs’ initial breakthroughs were buttressed by substantial support from the U.S. government, which spent heavily on the development of solar power.</p><p>The first practical use of solar power was for satellites. Solar allowed for a longer useful life than batteries alone did, and with cost of secondary importance in the early decades of the space race, scientists were able to use the still-expensive technology. The Vanguard I satellite, covered in solar cells, was launched in 1958. In the late 1960s, scientist Elliot Berman discovered that scrap silicon from semiconductor manufacturing, even with imperfections, could be used for solar power. Exxon’s backing of Berman’s discovery lowered manufacturing costs, and solar garnered significant interest as rising oil prices after the 1973 OPEC oil embargo sparked concerns about energy security. A series of innovations since then has continued to push down prices. The price per watt of electricity produced by solar has fallen almost 99 percent since the 1970s, from $70 a watt to 80 cents in 2012.<sup id="fnr2"><a href="#fn2">2</a></sup> By the time Suntech entered the scene, the technology was far enough along that it was able to grow successfully without needing to be more than incrementally innovative.</p><p>The dramatic increase in solar power just after the turn of the century owed much to government subsidies, such as those in Germany, Spain, and Italy, that provided incentives for companies to build solar farms by guaranteeing a high price for their power output. With the solar market growing rapidly, thanks to these subsidies for solar installations, the markedly lower prices charged by Suntech and other Chinese companies allowed them to quickly take market share from their high-cost Japanese, German, and American competitors.<sup id="fnr3"><a href="#fn3">3</a></sup></p><p>From its early days, Suntech—like so many Chinese companies—focused on exports, counting on its low costs to win sales. With the global solar market growing rapidly, especially where guaranteed high selling costs for solar power stimulated the market, the company was in an enviable position. In 2007, it opened its U.S. headquarters in San Francisco. The next year saw sales offices open in Germany, Spain, South Korea, and Australia. It built a global network of projects at sites ranging from the San Francisco Airport to the Bird’s Nest Stadium at the Beijing Olympics to the Yas Formula One race track in Abu Dhabi. Its solar panels went up on a school in Lebanon and a Harrah’s casino in southern California.</p><p>Shi was successful beyond imagination. By 2005, Suntech had sales of $226 million. That year—just four years after it was founded—the company went public on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), raising $455 million in the exchange’s biggest Chinese offering of the year. It also became the first private Chinese company to list on the Big Board. The next year, as a sign of the company’s importance, Shi was invited to sit on the exchange’s international advisory board.</p><p>For the next few years, Suntech’s sales soared, and so did its stock market valuation. Encouraged by Suntech’s success, other Chinese companies entered the industry, and the first decade of the 2000s saw Chinese companies sweep aside long-established international competitors. In 2012, PricewaterhouseCoopers released a report that ranked solar makers by their overall importance and gave Chinese companies eight of the ten top slots in the industry.<sup id="fnr4"><a href="#fn4">4</a></sup></p><p>Then came the fall. In March of 2013, after a series of missteps and a default on its bonds, Suntech’s major operating unit filed for bankruptcy, bringing normal business operations at the parent to an end.</p><p>The story of how and why Suntech rose to such heights and then plum-meted to earth holds lessons not only for solar panel makers and many of China’s other green-tech industries but also for China’s policy makers as they pursue their goal of increasing China’s technological sophistication and advancing its hope of becoming one of the world’s most innovative economies. Yet the story of Suntech’s failure hides a more important tale, one in which China’s impressive manufacturers have driven down prices far faster and further than anyone would have guessed a decade ago. Thanks to China’s unique industrial structure, one that prizes growth over profitability, solar power is now broadly cost-competitive with other energy sources throughout much of the world. As solar panel prices plummeted, installations skyrocketed, with the global solar power base growing twenty-five-fold from 2005 through 2013. No company was more important to this transition than the tragically flawed Suntech.<sup id="fnr5"><a href="#fn5">5</a></sup></p><p>One can think of China’s industrial structure as “start-up statism.” China fuses some of the world’s most risk-craving, dynamic entrepreneurs with top-down state policies with the help of government-directed capital. Suntech exemplifies what can happen to a company when faced with these forces. Japan and South Korea pursued similar patterns of what economists call financial repression (a policy that lets government issue debt at low rates by denying savers high returns) coupled with government-guided, investment-led, high-growth models, but neither country allowed the sort of anything-goes frenzy seen in China’s solar industry, where hundreds of competing companies started operations within the space of a few years.</p><p>First is the sheer amount of capital available. Bloomberg’s New Energy Finance Unit calculates that Chinese financial institutions had committed $47.5 billion in loans and lines of credit to the solar industry alone as of September 2013. It estimates further that the ten largest Chinese solar companies had $28.8 billion in debt, most of it owed to Chinese banks and other institutions.<sup id="fnr6"><a href="#fn6">6</a></sup></p><p>Because the economic system has few outlets for domestic savings other than bank deposits, stocks, and property purchases, much more money flows to bank deposits than would otherwise be the case. Banks, for their part, must use the money that depositors have entrusted to them. They would lose money if their deposits were left idle, so they recycle these deposits in the form of lending. Consumer lending is discouraged by government diktat, so consumer credit is virtually nonexistent, except for mortgages. (In China, consumer spending accounts for roughly one-third of annual economic growth; in the United States, consumers are responsible for about two-thirds of economic growth.) Instead, most of the money lent by banks is invested in capital projects—in roads and highways and in facilities like steel mills, cement factories, and solar plants.</p><p>As a result, China’s savings rate and investment rate, two sides of the same coin, are both extraordinarily high, leading to excess funds available for investment and, ultimately, to a large degree of inefficient, wasteful investment.<sup id="fnr7"><a href="#fn7">7</a></sup> Although Japan and South Korea pursued similar unbalanced growth models, penalizing savers and maintaining high levels of investment, no major country has ever saved or invested as much as China. Investment has accounted for at least 30 percent of China’s annual economic growth since the early 1980s, when Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms began in earnest. Since the turn of the century, the figure has generally been above 40 percent—extremely high by any historical standards. In 2012, the figure was 48 percent.</p><p>The second characteristic that makes China unique among Asian countries in the region is the structure of its local governments, which enables them to help fast-growing companies like Suntech. Local officials’ promotion prospects are to a large degree driven by the economic growth and the jobs created in their areas. At the same time, local officials have a good deal of discretion over land and taxation. They can easily convert land to industrial use (often seizing from existing users who are paid derisory compensation) and use it to attract businesses, frequently adding a variety of incentives in the form of reduced taxes and utility and water charges.<sup id="fnr8"><a href="#fn8">8</a></sup></p><p>Finally, there is the me-too quality of Chinese companies. A particular strain of entrepreneurship has developed as a result of the Chinese system. Successful businessmen are guided by an overriding drive to grow and thus have the scale to better deal with regulators and banks, rather than focusing on technical innovation and other, more mundane operating aspects of well-run businesses.</p><p>By 2013, in one of those figures that defy belief, half of China’s 600 cities had at least one solar producer, according to the China Renewable Energy Society. One industry listing put the number of Chinese solar manufacturers at 519 as of mid-2014, about as many as in Europe, the United States, Japan, Korea, and India combined.<sup id="fnr9"><a href="#fn9">9</a></sup></p><p>Profitability suffers because of these high levels of copycat investments. From 2005 to 2010, operating profits of the ten largest photovoltaic manu-facturers ranged between about 15 percent and 17 percent, with a dip to 7.9 percent in 2009, the year of the global financial crisis.<sup id="fnr10"><a href="#fn10">10</a></sup> After 2010, profit margins were obliterated. According to an analysis by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the ten largest solar companies reported an operating loss in 2011 equivalent to 1.2 percent of sales. The actual loss was higher because operating losses do not include interest expenses or taxes.</p><p>The solar industry showed the limits of China’s central government. Although China is a good example of what development literature calls a strong state, where government can set and enforce rules with relative autonomy, the country is simply too big and there are too many conflicting interests even within government itself for national economic policies to consistently prevail. In industries that are particularly capital-intensive and in which the state feels it has a strong national security interest, national policies usually stay in force; telecommunications, utilities, and petroleum are all examples of this. But even here, there are limits to Beijing’s power. Local interests often determine whose electrical solar or wind power gets dispatched, and thus who gets paid, from among myriad power producers. This ground-level favoritism has had significant negative consequences for some solar operators.</p><p>China has spent almost $50 billion in little more than a decade building the world’s largest solar manufacturing industry. By some accounts, it has little to show for the effort. Its companies have yet to demonstrate that they are viable, at least as measured by their ability to earn profits. In fact, cynics could argue that China’s solar effort is a mirage, built on subsidized electricity, most of it produced by coal-fired power plants and often using dirty manufacturing processes that have themselves resulted in environmental damage; financed with large amounts of inexpensive loans; and benefiting from preferential land and tax policies.</p><p>Yet to leave it at this is to misunderstand the full scope of the revolution. Solar power is an increasingly important part of the global energy mix, thanks to the success of Suntech and others in bringing prices down so far, so fast—with the result that solar is competitive with many other forms of conventional fossil-fueled power.</p><p>Suntech’s Shi Zhengrong was a revolutionary. But he was not able to reap the rewards of the changes he wrought, changes whose effects will be felt for many decades to come. The Sun King is dead, but his revolution lives on.{chop}</p><hr><ol id="footnotes"><li id="fn1">The Shi Zhengrong quote comes from an April 30, 2008, speech at the Asia Society in Hong Kong (where he told the restaurant anecdote); my thanks go to Penny Tang at the Asia Society for helping me locate a recording of this speech. Company details were found in company filings, press releases, and regulatory documents; specific references are cited below. I want to thank Jill Baker for her thorough and thoughtful analysis of Suntech’s financial statements. This account also draws extensively from Bill Powell and Charlie Zhu, Reuters, “<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/19/us-suntech-shi-specialreport-idUSBRE94I00220130519">Special Report: The Rise and Fall of China’s Sun King</a>,” May 18, 2013, accessed October 9, 2013.<a title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text" href="#fnr1">↩</a></li><li id="fn2">“The cost of a solar cell is about 41 U.S. cents a watt today, down from $1.46 in 2010 and about $3 in 2004 when Germany started offering its incentives,” according to data from Bloomberg New Energy Finance. “<a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013–09–08/chinese-zombies-emerging-after-years-of-solar-subsidies.html">Chinese Zombies Emerging After Years of Solar Subsidies</a>,” Bloomberg News, September 9, 2013, accessed March 6, 2014.<a title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the text" href="#fnr2">↩</a></li><li id="fn3">Much of the growth in solar power was driven by subsidies, notably in Spain, Germany, and Italy. These three countries each decided to boost solar power by guaranteeing the purchase price at which they would buy solar power that was fed into their electrical grid systems. This boosted the solar industry but also had the unintended effect of jump-starting the Chinese solar industry. Those generous programs fell victim to the global financial crisis. Spain had been among the countries most eager to fund a substantial solar industry. Next came Germany. Germany was not bankrupt, but its program was in some sense too successful—it ended up being very expensive, and its government approved cuts to solar subsidies in March 2012. Tony Czuczka,“<a href="http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012–03–29/germany-cuts-solar-aid-to-curb-prices-panel-installations">Germany Cuts Solar Aid to Curb Prices, Panel Installations</a>,” Bloomberg News, March 29, 2012, accessed March 6, 2014.<a title="Jump back to footnote 3 in the text" href="#fnr3">↩</a></li><li id="fn4">For a good overview of the growing global importance of solar power, see David Frankel, Kenneth Ostrowski, and Dickon Pinner, “The Disruptive Potential of Solar Power,” McKinsey Quarterly 2014, no. 2, 50–55. For China, see PwC. 2012, “<a href="http://www.pwc.com/en_US/us/technology/assets/pwc-pv-sustainable-growth-index.pdf">2012 Photovoltaic Sustainable Growth Index</a>,” especially p. 3, October, accessed March 6, 2014.<a title="Jump back to footnote 4 in the text" href="#fnr4">↩</a></li><li id="fn5">Jeffrey Ball, “<a href="https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/headlines/chinas-solar-panel-boom-bust">China’s Solar-Panel Boom and Bust</a>,” Stanford Graduate School of Business, June 7, 2013, accessed May 16, 2014.<a title="Jump back to footnote 5 in the text" href="#fnr5">↩</a></li><li id="fn6">A Bloomberg report in late 2013 cited $47.5 billion of credit lines that served to cripple the industry with overcapacity. “<a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013–09–03/solar-defaults-shock-holders-as-8–4-billion-due-china-credit.html">Solar Defaults Shock Holders as $8.4 Billion Due: China Credit</a>,” Bloomberg News, September 3, 2013, accessed May 26, 2014.<a title="Jump back to footnote 6 in the text" href="#fnr6">↩</a></li><li id="fn7">Michael Pettis writes extensively on the impact of financial repression in China. See, for example, this blog post: Michael Pettis, “<a href="http://blog.mpettis.com/2013/12/monetary-policy-under-financial-repression/">Monetary Policy Under Financial Repression</a>,” December 20, 2013, accessed February 4, 2014.<a title="Jump back to footnote 7 in the text" href="#fnr7">↩</a></li><li id="fn8">Suntech’s 2006 Annual Report details some of the tax benefits. Suntech Power Holdings Co., Ltd., <a href="http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1342803/000114554907001069/h01290e20vf.htm">FY06 Form 20-F for the Fiscal Year Ended December 31, 2006</a> (filed June 18, 2007), p. 49, SEC Next-Generation EDGAR System, accessed March 5, 2014.<a title="Jump back to footnote 8 in the text" href="#fnr8">↩</a></li><li id="fn9">Cited in “<a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013–09–17/china-to-strictly-limit-building-of-more-photovoltaic-capacity.html">China’s Limit on New Solar Factories Seen Driving M&A</a>,” Bloomberg News, September 18, 2013, accessed March 8, 2014. The ENF Company Directory listed 519 solar manufacturing companies in China as of May 8, 2014. ENF Ltd., “<a href="http://www.enfsolar.com/directory/panel/China">Solar Panel Manufacturers in China</a>,” accessed May 8, 2014.<a title="Jump back to footnote 9 in the text" href="#fnr9">↩</a></li><li id="fn10">PwC, “<a href="http://www.pwc.com/en_US/us/technology/assets/pwc-pv-sustainable-growth-index.pdf">2012 Photovoltaic Sustainable Growth Index</a>,” p. 2, October 2012, accessed March 6, 2014. PwC is a member firm of PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP.<a title="Jump back to footnote 10 in the text" href="#fnr10">↩</a></li></ol>Wednesday, February 25, 2015 - 1:01pmChinaFileDouble Impacthttp://www.chinafile.com/node/13716
<p>This paper makes the case for establishing a national CO2 price in China as soon as possible. End-of-pipe pollution control technologies—a core component of China’s Air Pollution Action Plan (APAP)—can address local air pollution but not CO2 emissions. It concludes by emphasizing how the introduction of a CO2 price could ensure air pollution control does not come at the expense of sound, long-term climate change management. By putting early pressure on carbon intensive energy sources also responsible for air pollution, a CO2 price would reduce the extent of end-of-pipe air pollution controls needed to achieve air quality goals, thereby preventing carbon lock-in.</p>
Wednesday, February 25, 2015 - 12:00amChinaFileChinese Firms Must Act Decisively on Climate Change, Report Sayshttp://www.chinafile.com/node/13426
<p class="dropcap">Chinese companies will need to cut direct greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of their operations by up to 2.7% a year if China is to stay on track with the level of action required to keep global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius, says a <a href="/node/13471">new report</a> authored by climate consultants Ecofys for green group WWF.</p><p>China’s power generation sector, which draws upon coal for around 68% of its output, will need to cut its carbon footprint by around 8% a year if China is to do its bit in helping the world avoid runaway climate change, the report adds.</p><p>Companies in the world’s second-biggest economy account for around half of China’s emissions, the report says, and it adds that a decisive shift away from fossil fuels will only happen if management is committed to low carbon energy and specific targets.</p><p><div class="cboxes white_paper wide3 grid-6 img-no logo-yes"><div class="cb-head"> <h3><a href="/library/reports">Reports</a></h3> <span class="date">02.11.15</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon4.gif"></span></div><div class="cb-link"><a href="/library/reports/its-time-peak"></a></div><div class="cb-cont"> <h2><a href="/library/reports/its-time-peak">It’s Time to Peak</a></h2> <span class="authors"><a href="/library/reports/its-time-peak">World Wildlife</a></span> <div class="inner-content"> <p>Without additional efforts, global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will continue to increase by 3.7 – 4.8 °C, a level well beyond the 2 °C temperature rise limit widely agreed among scientists and governments across the world as a limit above which implications of climate...</p> </div> </div> <div class="cb-logo"> <a href="/library/reports/its-time-peak" target="_blank"> <img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/epsacrop_142x200/public/assets/images/whitepaper/image/its_time_to_peak.png?itok=6lZExZGG" alt="" /></a> </div></div></p><p>But the extent that many Chinese companies are willing to switch to cleaner forms of energy appears highly limited, at least in the short-term.</p><p>Data on air quality <a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/asia-pacific/air-pollution-has-made-beijing-unliveable-says-city-s-mayor-1.2088603" target="_blank">released</a> by the Chinese government last month showed that policies aimed at curbing coal consumption and improving chronic air quality—which would also help drive down carbon emissions—had done little to reduce smog in Beijing.</p><p>Companies in heavily-industrialized neighboring provinces to the capital have been unwilling to take the painful steps necessary to shut carbon-intensive capacity, while their political benefactors fret about the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/30/china-peak-coal-demand_n_6582336.html" target="_blank">impact</a> of coal curbs on employment in China’s rustbelt.</p><p>The WWF/Ecofys report offers some solutions, however.</p><p>Companies outside the utility sector have the opportunity to use on-site renewable generation, improving the efficiency of the electricity they use, and buy renewable fuels and electricity, the report says.</p><p>Sze Ping-Lo, who heads WWF China, points to GHG reduction targets at Vanke (a real estate company) and Yingli (a maker of photovoltaic panels).</p><p>But whether most of corporate China, particularly big energy users, will even bother taking action to reduce their carbon footprint is likely to depend strongly on carbon pricing in a future nationwide emissions trading scheme, subsidies, taxes, and tough environmental laws that are enforced properly.</p><p>Corporate action on climate change, <a href="http://www.un.org/climatechange/summit/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/INDUSTRY-PR.pdf" target="_blank">seen</a> by the U.N. as crucial to put the world on a path to lower emissions, has been patchy at best elsewhere in the world.</p><p>Even in Germany, which has strong environmental controls, generous subsidies for renewables, increasingly decentralized solar and wind generation, and relatively enlightened boardrooms, companies still draw on a grid where <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21620080-germanys-reliance-russian-gas-fallingbut-not-sustainably-going-out-gas" target="_blank">around 50%</a> of its electricity comes from lignite and coal.</p><p>Foreign companies also have a major responsibility for China's carbon emissions, given that the country is the world's largest manufacturer of electronics for large corporations such as Apple and Samsung, and is the world's biggest producer of primary materials such as steel, aluminum, and refrigerants.<span class="cube"></span></p>Monday, February 23, 2015 - 4:14pmChinaFileFive Predictions for Chinese Censorship in the Year of the Sheephttp://www.chinafile.com/node/13396
<p>Blocked websites, jailed journalists, and nationalist rhetoric have long been features of the Chinese Communist Party’s media control strategy. During the Year of the Horse, which just ended on China’s lunar calendar, President Xi Jinping and his colleagues ramped up the intensity of their control methods, while relying on revived or new tactics (like airing dissenters’ televised confessions and promoting centrally controlled social media news feeds) in an effort to dominate the information environment.</p><p>In the Year of the Sheep, which began on February 19, China’s censors will inevitably take new steps to advance the government narrative and constrict the space for dissent. Below are five media and Internet developments likely to take place:</p><h3>1. A Tightening Chinese Firewall</h3><p><div class="cboxes article wide2 grid-4 img-yes logo-no"><div class="cb-head"> <h3><a href="/conversation">Conversation</a></h3> <span class="date">01.29.15</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon4.gif"></span></div><div class="cb-link"><a href="/conversation/chinas-internet-becoming-intranet"></a></div><div class="cb-img"><a href="/conversation/chinas-internet-becoming-intranet"><img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/20110507_zaf_c43_002.jpg?itok=w-3IzWJn" alt="" /></a></div><div class="cb-cont"> <h2><a href="/conversation/chinas-internet-becoming-intranet">Is China’s Internet Becoming an Intranet?</a></h2> <span class="authors"><a href="/conversation/chinas-internet-becoming-intranet">George Chen, Charlie Smith & <a href="/conversation/chinas-internet-becoming-intranet">more</a></a></span> <div class="inner-content"> <p>With Astrill and several other free and paid-subscription virtual private networks (VPNs) that make leaping China’s Great Firewall possible now harder to use themselves after government interference "gummed" them up, the world wide web just shrank a notch for 600...</p> </div> </div></div></p><p>Chinese Internet users are increasingly referring to their Internet as a “LAN,” or “local area network”—<a href="/node/12836">effectively a type of intranet</a>—as it becomes more isolated than ever before. The combination of recent upgrades to the “Great Firewall” filtering system, new restrictions on <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30982198">virtual private network</a> (VPN) services employed by users to reach blocked overseas websites, and a policy narrative <a href="/node/13291">extolling</a> the principle of “<a href="http://thediplomat.com/2014/12/chinas-internet-agenda/">Internet sovereignty</a>”—the right of each state to regulate its own cyberspace—has taken a toll. In 2014, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/30/technology/gmail-is-blocked-in-china-after-months-of-disruption.html?_r=0">Gmail</a>, other previously available <a href="http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/traffic/#expand=CN">Google services</a>, and Yahoo’s <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-07-03/china-blocked-line-flickr-amid-protests-greatfire-says">Flickr</a> photo-sharing service joined social networks Facebook and Twitter as internationally-used web tools that are blocked in China. Expect revamped regulatory entities like the Cyberspace Administration of China to tighten controls at home while working with other authoritarian regimes to promote “Internet sovereignty” and change the rules of global Internet governance. That doesn’t mean hope is lost; technologists will also continue their arms race with the Great Firewall, developing new tools to meet the demands of Chinese users determined to reach blocked services.</p><h3>2. The First WeChat Arrest</h3><p><div class="cboxes article wide2 grid-4 img-yes logo-no"><div class="cb-head"> <h3><a href="/reporting-opinion/viewpoint">Viewpoint</a></h3> <span class="date">09.10.14</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon4.gif"></span></div><div class="cb-link"><a href="/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/china-tough-new-internet-rules-explained"></a></div><div class="cb-img"><a href="/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/china-tough-new-internet-rules-explained"><img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/51083821.jpg?itok=vmibR671" alt="" /></a></div><div class="cb-cont"> <h2><a href="/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/china-tough-new-internet-rules-explained">China’s Tough New Internet Rules Explained</a></h2> <span class="authors"><a href="/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/china-tough-new-internet-rules-explained">Hu Yong</a></span> <div class="inner-content"> <p>On August 7, the State Internet Information Office issued a new set of guidelines entitled “Provisional Regulations for the Development and Management of Instant Messaging Tools and Public Information Services.” These regulations require that instant messaging service...</p> </div> </div></div></p><p>After a sweeping crackdown on the popular Weibo microblogging service, Chinese authorities have turned their sights to Tencent’s WeChat, an instant-messaging program used by hundreds of millions to which many Weibo users had migrated. During 2014, government took particular aim at public accounts used by journalists, activists, and Internet portals to disseminate articles on current affairs. In March, <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/article/china-media-bulletin-issue-no-102#3">39 such accounts</a> were shut down or suspended. In May, Tencent reportedly intensified efforts to <a href="http://globalvoicesonline.org/2014/08/08/china-tightens-its-control-of-popular-messaging-app-wechat-with-real-name-registration/">verify the identities</a> of users behind public accounts. And in August, these restrictions were formalized when the government prohibited instant-messaging accounts from posting political news without official approval. In the likely event that the continuing crackdown on WeChat follows the script of past censorship campaigns, expect to see the first high-profile arrest for sharing politically sensitive information over the platform, as well as more closures of activists’ personal accounts and stronger enforcement of real-name registration.</p><h3>3. High Censorship Around Xi’s First U.S. Visit As President</h3><p><div class="cboxes article wide2 grid-4 img-yes logo-no"><div class="cb-head"> <h3><a href="/reporting-opinion/viewpoint">Viewpoint</a></h3> <span class="date">09.26.14</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon4.gif"></span></div><div class="cb-link"><a href="/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/china-us-relationship-basically-good"></a></div><div class="cb-img"><a href="/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/china-us-relationship-basically-good"><img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/obama_and_xi.jpg?itok=uNKoEvpN" alt="" /></a></div><div class="cb-cont"> <h2><a href="/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/china-us-relationship-basically-good">‘The China-U.S. Relationship is Basically Good’</a></h2> <span class="authors"><a href="/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/china-us-relationship-basically-good">Wu Jianmin</a></span> <div class="inner-content"> <p>A few days ago, I was in Washington, D.C. for a conference. While there, I met some American friends. We had an interesting discussion about what seems to me to be a debate going on in the U.S. about China-U.S. relations: One side believes the China-U.S. relationship is going...</p> </div> </div></div></p><p>In September, Xi Jinping is scheduled to make his first state <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/12/world/asia/china-president-xi-jinping-state-visit-to-us.html?_r=0">visit</a> to the United States as president of China. The excursion into the unpredictable world of a free media and vibrant civil society will inevitably lead to some incident or event prompting censors back home to take action amidst otherwise glowing state media saturation. It might entail blacking out Tibetan and Falun Gong activists protesting abuses along the route of Xi’s motorcade. Or it might reprise an incident during Hu Jintao’s visit in 2011, when he acknowledged <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/20/AR2011012005348.html">human rights shortcomings</a> during a press conference, prompting state media to censor their own president.</p><h3>4. Jail Time For More Prominent Free Speech Advocates</h3><p><div class="cboxes article wide2 grid-4 img-yes logo-no"><div class="cb-head"> <h3><a href="/library/nyrb-china-archive">The NYRB China Archive</a></h3> <span class="date">02.09.15</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon4.gif"></span></div><div class="cb-link"><a href="/library/nyrb-china-archive/china-inventing-crime"></a></div><div class="cb-img"><a href="/library/nyrb-china-archive/china-inventing-crime"><img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/148789401.jpg?itok=KDcN3Nua" alt="" /></a></div><div class="cb-cont"> <h2><a href="/library/nyrb-china-archive/china-inventing-crime">China: Inventing a Crime</a></h2> <span class="authors"><a href="/library/nyrb-china-archive/china-inventing-crime">Perry Link</a></span> <div class="inner-content"> <p>In late January, Chinese authorities announced that they are considering formal charges against Pu Zhiqiang, one of China’s most prominent human rights lawyers, who has been in detention since last May. Pu’s friends fear that even a life sentence is possible. The crime? “...</p> </div> </div></div></p><p>Three internationally renowned advocates of media freedom will face potentially long prison sentences in the coming months—and their odds are not good. Dissident journalist <a href="https://www.cpj.org/2014/05/chinese-journalist-gao-yu-jailed-for-leaking-secre.php">Gao Yu</a> was arrested in 2014 and forced to give a televised confession in May; she has been detained for “leaking state secrets” for allegedly sharing a high-level Party document urging tighter ideological control with overseas contacts, and now faces possible life in prison. Leading activist <a href="http://www.hrichina.org/en/defenders/guo-feixiong">Guo Feixiong</a> was tried in November, but no verdict has been announced; he has been in detention since August 2013 and is facing punishment for calling publicly for free speech during protests to support a journalist strike against censorship in January 2013 at the well-known <em>Southern Weekly</em>. He could face up to five years in jail, especially given an earlier stint in prison as punishment for his activism. Then there’s attorney <a href="/node/5024">Pu Zhiqiang</a>—who himself represented high-profile free speech advocates like artist Ai Weiwei—who has been in custody since May 2014 after attending a private gathering to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the bloody crackdown on Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protesters. With the authorities repeatedly <a href="http://lawyerpu.com/2015/02/12/china-inventing-a-crime/">changing</a> the nature of the charges against Pu, his potential punishment is unclear, but <a href="node/13391">if he is convicted</a> of “inciting to subvert state power,” one set of charges filed in <a href="http://lawyerpu.com/2014/11/21/lawyer-pu-could-face-harsher-charges/">November</a>, he could face up to a decade in prison. In China’s politicized legal system, the cases against all three are rife with irregularities and there is a strong chance they will be convicted. Domestic and international pressure on a given activist’s behalf could yield leniency, but it’s a good bet that the regime comes down hard on at least one of the three.</p><h3>5. New Attacks on Hong Kong Media</h3><p><div class="cboxes article wide2 grid-4 img-yes logo-no"><div class="cb-head"> <h3><a href="/reporting-opinion/media">Media</a></h3> <span class="date">04.02.14</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon4.gif"></span></div><div class="cb-link"><a href="/reporting-opinion/media/future-democracy-hong-kong"></a></div><div class="cb-img"><a href="/reporting-opinion/media/future-democracy-hong-kong"><img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/5283l.jpg?itok=MERfW-UJ" alt="" /></a></div><div class="cb-cont"> <h2><a href="/reporting-opinion/media/future-democracy-hong-kong">The Future of Democracy in Hong Kong </a></h2> <span class="authors"><a href="/reporting-opinion/media/future-democracy-hong-kong">The Editors</a></span> <div class="inner-content"> <p>Veteran Hong Kong political leaders Anson Chan and Martin Lee describe some of the core values—such as freedom of the press—that they seek to maintain as Beijing asserts greater control over the territory seventeen years after Britain handed it back to China on the condition...</p> </div> </div></div></p><p>The past three years have featured a growing number and increasingly violent series of physical assaults against independently minded journalists and owners in the autonomous territory. These attacks have occurred alongside a <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2015/hong-kong#.VNvEFVfF9Fk">sharp decline</a> in media freedoms as major businesses have withdrawn advertising from critical outlets, cyberattacks disrupt coverage by independent media, and reporters acknowledge growing self-censorship. The trend began before a pro-democracy protest movement challenged Beijing’s decision to restrict nominations for future chief executive elections, but it intensified during and after the demonstrations. Even as some perpetrators of attacks on journalists have been arrested, Hong Kong authorities have avoided investigating possible masterminds or links to the central government. In a political atmosphere of impunity, and efforts by Beijing to curb what it sees as antigovernment activism, new physical and cyberattacks on journalists and other threats to media freedom are almost certain.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p>Should all or most of these predictions come to fruition, the resulting state of affairs will not merely be destructive for the families directly affected or for the cause of free expression. Chinese citizens and the international community at large will be deprived of vital news and information, and global news consumers will have to contend with a party better equipped to extend the reach of its information control apparatus beyond mainland China’s borders.<span class="cube"></span></p><p><div class="cboxes white_paper wide3 grid-6 img-no logo-yes"><div class="cb-head"> <h3><a href="/library/reports">Reports</a></h3> <span class="date">01.01.15</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon4.gif"></span></div><div class="cb-link"><a href="/library/reports/politburos-predicament"></a></div><div class="cb-cont"> <h2><a href="/library/reports/politburos-predicament">The Politburo’s Predicament</a></h2> <span class="authors"><a href="/library/reports/politburos-predicament">Freedom House</a></span> <div class="inner-content"> <p>Drawing on an analysis of hundreds of official documents, censorship directives, and human rights reports, as well as some 30 expert interviews, the study finds that the overall degree of repression has increased under the new leadership. Of 17 categories of victims assessed, 11...</p> </div> </div> <div class="cb-logo"> <a href="/library/reports/politburos-predicament" target="_blank"> <img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/epsacrop_142x200/public/assets/images/whitepaper/image/the_politburos_predicament.png?itok=n4Kwa_sf" alt="" /></a> </div></div></p>Monday, February 23, 2015 - 12:56pmChinaFile‘Still Not Married?’ A Graphic Guide to Surviving Chinese New Yearhttp://www.chinafile.com/node/13356
<p>Maya Hong is a Beijing transplant from a small town outside of Harbin, the icy city not far from China’s border with Siberia. Though proud of her glacial origins and skilled at combating subzero temperatures, over the years Hong, 30, has had to add to her repertoire to stay comfortable on her visits home. Lately, in addition to the lancing Arctic winds she faces a yearly inquisition from relatives and neighbors about why she is returning home for the Chinese New Year without a husband or news of an imminent engagement.</p><p><div class="cboxes article wide2 grid-4 img-yes logo-no"><div class="cb-head"> <h3><a href="/reporting-opinion/viewpoint">Viewpoint</a></h3> <span class="date">04.23.14</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon4.gif"></span></div><div class="cb-link"><a href="/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/half-sky-leftovers"></a></div><div class="cb-img"><a href="/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/half-sky-leftovers"><img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/leftover_women_sm.jpg?itok=xk36wrrO" alt="" /></a></div><div class="cb-cont"> <h2><a href="/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/half-sky-leftovers">From Half the Sky to ‘Leftovers’</a></h2> <span class="authors"><a href="/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/half-sky-leftovers">Mei Fong & Leta Hong Fincher</a></span> <div class="inner-content"> <p>The three-plus decades since the inception of the ‘one child’ policy have resulted in a huge female shortage in China. The country is now seriously unbalanced, with 18 million more boys than girls. By 2020, there will be some 30 million surplus men in China, a condition some...</p> </div> </div></div></p><p>Because her family has lived in her father’s work unit housing for more than 30 years, all of her neighbors have known her since birth, and everything is everyone’s business. “In order to get to my front door, I need to pass the homes of five other neighbors on foot,” she explains. “If I do that during the day, at least one person from each building is bound to pop out and start asking me personal questions. I just can’t face that.” Instead, she makes sure to always take a train from Beijing that arrives in Harbin late at night. Though the icy roads from the train station to her home are considerably more dangerous to navigate in the dark, she pleads with her older sister to pick her up from the last train. Once she’s safe inside her house, she does everything possible not to leave it for the duration of the holiday.</p><p>In modern China, where the societal force to wed remains so strong that marrying off a child is the personal mission of just about every parent with offspring under 30 (after 30, it becomes a crusade, and after marriage, parents switch gears into procreation pressure mode), thousands of singles above the age of 25 face a similar holiday harangue when returning home to celebrate the new year. But word has it that a cheeky superheroine has caught wind of their plight and swept in to the rescue.</p><p><div class="visual-box photo-object grid-8 p-left pull-left"> <div class="visual-image-box"> <img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/scale_photo_inset/public/cjsn_hui_lao_jia-3-01_2.jpg?itok=faU6FyRf" alt="" /> </div> </div></p>Friday, February 20, 2015 - 1:08pmChinaFileMajor China Apple Supplier Pays Workers Less Than Foxconnhttp://www.chinafile.com/node/13351
<p>Apple, the world’s most beloved maker of sleek mobile phones, powerful personal computers, and slim portable music players recently reported record profits—money a new report from the New York-based nongovernmental organization China Labor Watch (CLW) says is dependent upon using cheap and exploited Chinese labor.</p>
<p>Upon the release last week of the full CLW report, “<a href="http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/report/107" rel="nofollow">Analyzing Labor Conditions of Pegatron and Foxconn: Apple’s Low-Cost Reality</a>,” ChinaFile caught up with one of its authors, Kevin Slaten.</p>
<p><strong>Jonathan Landreth: What is Pegatron?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Kevin Slaten:</strong> Pegatron Shanghai, the factory we focused on in this report, is a subsidiary of Pegatron Group, a Taiwanese-owned major supplier of electronic products to Apple. It’s one of Apple’s main suppliers and over the past few years it has received a larger proportion of Apple’s manufacturing orders. Pegatron Shanghai has about 80,000 workers and most of them are producing Apple products. The Pegatron Group has many locations in mainland China.</p>
<p><strong>How big is Pegatron relative to <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-china/what-the-foxconn-riot-says-about-china" rel="nofollow">Foxconn</a>, the Taiwanese conglomerate whose Chinese factories drew Apple so much bad press in 2012?</strong></p>
<p>Pegatron’s revenues and their stock have started to mirror Apple’s in the past year or more, whereas Foxconn’s have flattened out [see: <a href="http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/report/107" rel="nofollow">CLW report, p. 5</a>]. We’ve noticed through <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b3ef10b4-bca1-11e2-9519-00144feab7de.html#axzz3RYKp8yy4" rel="nofollow">financial and business news reports</a> that Pegatron has gone from producing Apple’s more peripheral products, like the iPhone 4 CDMA, to core products like the <a href="http://www.macrumors.com/2014/08/14/pegatron-lands-50-4-7-iphone6-orders/" rel="nofollow">iPhone 6</a> and the iPad Mini.</p>
<p><strong>Why is Apple switching suppliers in China?</strong></p>
<p>Based on our research, we believe that one of the main reasons Apple is starting to rely more on Pegatron for its production is low costs by way of lower labor costs. Our report breaks down how the labor costs are lower and what this means for the worker.</p>
<p><strong>How much lower are the labor costs at Pegatron?</strong></p>
<p>We estimated based on the pay stubs we collected from workers at Pegatron and wage information we had from Foxconn from past investigations and recent interviews, and when we calculated all-in labor costs, the cost including things like bonuses, subsidies, the hiring costs to the company, we found an 8% difference between Foxconn’s facility in Longhua and Pegatron in Shanghai.</p>
<p><strong>So are wages themselves lower?</strong></p>
<p>Wages are also lower. Actually, the way we calculate puts Pegatron in a more favorable light because we tried to calculate additional expenses, not just base pay. For base pay alone, there’s a 21% difference. For example, the base pay for a typical production worker (after the probation period) is 2,300 RMB (about U.S.$370) at Foxconn and 1,820 RMB (U.S.$290) at Pegatron. What this doesn’t include is that Pegatron hires an enormous number of dispatch workers who are temp workers, and they save money on these temp workers because they don’t pay them full benefits and they don’t have to pay wages to them in the low season.</p>
<p><strong>How does China Labor Watch survey Chinese workers to access the information at the core of your recent report?</strong></p>
<p>A lot of our investigations are done through direct worker interviews. For this report, we interviewed dozens of workers and we were able to do data analysis because we obtained 96 pay stubs [provided by more than 80 workers] covering work done from August to December 2014 in 25 different sections within 18 different departments in Pegatron Shanghai. Departments have thousands of workers and sections have hundreds of workers. Our sample was pretty wide within the factory.</p>
<p>In December, the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/business-30532463" rel="nofollow">BBC reported</a> that Apple’s top Corporate Social Responsibility guy said that the average workweek at Pegatron was 55 hours. The investigation that we did recently clearly shows that this is very questionable. There was only one month in the five we looked at when workers averaged only 55 hours. All others they were working many more hours than that, and those are just on a weekly basis.</p>
<p><strong>What can a consumer of Apple products do?</strong></p>
<p>Consumers can contact Apple directly, bring to their attention the reports from NGO’s like ours and other advocates, and say, “This is not enough,” and say they need to put more money into labor and better labor conditions. They can also use our democratic system, which, unfortunately, is not really developed in China, to put pressure on companies like Apple to improve working conditions. There have been a number of bills proposed in the Congress to restrict sweatshop labor conditions connected to American corporations. They’ve constantly been shot down, but we need more support from voters to get acts like these through.</p>
<p><strong>Who is the author on one of the more recent bills?</strong></p>
<p>One of the major proponents of these bills is Sherrod Brown of Ohio. His <a href="https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/109/hr5635/text" rel="nofollow">bill</a>’s been proposed two or three times but lobbyists got on it real fast because it’s extremely costly to companies. Why? Because companies like Apple are looking for low-cost producers, they’re looking to maximize their profit while balancing their public image. I think that’s how we need to see Apple’s response to these reports. It’s trying to find a way to give us the image that it’s doing something, so it puts out these really nice <a href="https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple_Progress_Report_2015.pdf" rel="nofollow">supplier responsibility reports</a>, but in reality we’re not seeing this play out on the ground, because Apple’s still seeking out the lowest-cost producers. Apple has to make a decision that it’s not just going to seek out a cheaper producer; it needs to invest in better working conditions.<span class="cube"></span></p>
<p class="url-ext" data-full-url="http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/newscast/421"><em>—Editors' note: China Labor Watch sent a <a href="http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/newscast/421" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">letter</a> to Apple CEO Tim Cook in May 2014, but never received a response.</em></p>
Friday, February 20, 2015 - 12:28pmChinaFileBeijing Touts ‘Cyber-Sovereignty’ In Internet Governance http://www.chinafile.com/node/13291
<p class="dropcap">It has been a difficult few weeks for global technology companies operating in China.</p>
<p>Chinese officials strengthened the Internet firewall by <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30982198" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">blocking</a> the use of virtual private networks (VPNs), reasserted demands that web users <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/china-to-enforce-real-name-registration-for-internet-users-1423033973" rel="nofollow">register their real names</a>, and issued a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/29/technology/in-china-new-cybersecurity-rules-perturb-western-tech-companies.html?_r=0" rel="nofollow">new regulation</a> requiring enhanced scrutiny of imported IT products in the financial industry. In response, a consortium of 17 trade groups <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/06/business/international/us-business-group-urges-resistance-to-chinese-policy.html" rel="nofollow">wrote U.S. trade officials</a> urging them to resist China’s new cybersecurity policies.</p>
<p>But while U.S. tech firms are right to be concerned about their present treatment in China, they should understand that China’s maneuverings are rooted in its new embrace of “cyber-sovereignty,” a principle that holds that national governments should have the right to supervise, regulate, and censor all electronic content transmitted within their borders. China’s push to practice this principle at home and abroad brings with it the promise of substantial new opportunities for global tech firms operating in China, even as it challenges long-held Western assumptions about a free and democratic Internet.</p>
<h3>Cyber-Sovereignty and Global Internet Governance</h3>
<p>Cyber-sovereignty (“<em>wangluo zhuquan</em>” or “internet sovereignty,” as it is sometimes translated) emerged as a foundational policy following an administrative realignment that occurred in the wake of Edward Snowden’s <a href="http://www.chinafile.com/conversation/whats-right-or-wrong-chinese-stance-edward-snowden" rel="nofollow">revelations</a> that the U.S. had been snooping into Chinese cybernetworks for years, often through third-party technology.</p>
<p>In response to these revelations, China reacted to the new threat by centralizing Internet policy in two high-level organs: a Communist Party “Central Leading Group for Cyberspace Affairs” chaired by President Xi Jinping and tasked with drafting “national strategies, development plans, and major policies”; and a State Internet Information Office (SIIO), led by Lu Wei, and apparently <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/04/us-china-internet-idUSTRE7436SA20110504" rel="nofollow">tasked with promulgating these policies</a> to lower-ranking ministries. (In addition to his position as Director of SIIO, Lu is also the Director of the General Office of the Central Leading Group for Cyberspace Affairs, and thus clearly has the ear of President Xi.)</p>
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<p> <span class="date">01.29.15</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon4.gif" /></span></p></div>
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<h2><a href="/conversation/chinas-internet-becoming-intranet" rel="nofollow">Is China’s Internet Becoming an Intranet?</a></h2>
<p> <span class="authors"><a href="/conversation/chinas-internet-becoming-intranet" rel="nofollow">George Chen, Charlie Smith & </a><a href="/conversation/chinas-internet-becoming-intranet" rel="nofollow">more</a></span><br /></p><div class="inner-content">
<p>With Astrill and several other free and paid-subscription virtual private networks (VPNs) that make leaping China’s Great Firewall possible now harder to use themselves after government interference "gummed" them up, the world wide web just shrank a notch for 600...</p>
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<p>The concept of cyber-sovereignty began to appear in China’s political discourse shortly following this administrative reshuffling. Since last summer, it has become a near-ubiquitous component of Chinese comments delivered to overseas audiences on the subject of Internet management.</p>
<p>To date, the most high-profile political benediction for this principle has come from President Xi in official comments made at two international forums. At a speech to Brazil’s National Congress in July 2014, Xi <a href="http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2014-07/17/content_17818027.htm" rel="nofollow">asserted</a> that “Internet technologies must not be used to violate cyber-sovereignty.” In November, at the inaugural China-hosted World Internet Congress, Xi wrote a welcoming letter to attendees stressing that China was willing to work with other countries to build an Internet <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-30125192" rel="nofollow">founded on</a> “respect for cyber- sovereignty and the upholding of cyber-security.”</p>
<p>These remarks have since been synthesized by Chinese media, with the online arm of China Radio International noting that President Xi’s <a href="http://gb.cri.cn/42071/2014/11/26/882s4780005.htm" rel="nofollow">conception of cyber-sovereignty</a> “has two levels of significance: an internal component where each government has the right to develop, regulate, and manage its domestic Internet in line with its national independent autonomy; and an external component involving the right to defend its Internet from foreign intrusion and attack.”</p>
<p>The importance of cyber-sovereignty as a guiding principle for China’s leaders was further demonstrated by an incident at the close of the aforementioned World Internet Congress. There, conference attendees, including representatives of the world’s leading technology companies, <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/11/21/china-delivers-midnight-internet-declaration-offline/" rel="nofollow">received</a> a last-minute nine-point “draft declaration” <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/world/asia/gregarious-and-direct-chinas-web-doorkeeper.html" rel="nofollow">placed</a> under their hotel room doors at midnight, with comments due back by 8 a.m. The communiqué included a commitment to respect “the Internet sovereignty of all countries.” After conference attendees refused to accept China’s last-minute gambit, the issue was quietly tabled. However, word of this refusal must not have <a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/tech/2014-11/21/content_18953736.htm" rel="nofollow">reached</a> the editors of <em>China Daily</em>, whose headline proclaimed “Key Internet Leaders Agree on Cyber Sovereignty, Security” in a story posted online the next day. The article’s claims that conference attendees had agreed at the closing ceremony “to respect Internet sovereignty” was sharply disputed by <em>The Wall Street Journal</em>, whose own account of the proceedings <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/11/21/china-delivers-midnight-internet-declaration-offline/" rel="nofollow">reported</a> “[cyber-sovereignty] was left unmentioned in the final speeches.”</p>
<p>Of course, given that China is the country with the world’s largest Internet population (649 million Chinese were online at last <a href="http://www.cac.gov.cn/2015-02/03/c_1114237273.htm" rel="nofollow">official count</a> in February), we should not be surprised it insists on a seat at the table of global Internet governance. Indeed, the world should welcome China’s desire to engage. But China’s conception of cyber-sovereignty is nothing less than a sharp realignment of the traditional conception of the Internet promoted in the developed world, from an open platform regulated by a diverse array of stakeholders, to one fragmented by national boundaries and regulated piecemeal by national governments. Under the Chinese conception of “cyber-sovereignty” all forms of national censorship are equivalent. Whether a German ban on hate speech or a Chinese ban on any content “disrupting social stability,” each prohibition stems from specific national and cultural conditions—as determined by their governments—and therefore is equally valid.</p>
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<p> <span class="date">06.13.13</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon4.gif" /></span></p></div>
<div class="cb-link"><a href="/conversation/whod-you-rather-be-watched-china-or-us" rel="nofollow"></a></div>
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<h2><a href="/conversation/whod-you-rather-be-watched-china-or-us" rel="nofollow">Who’d You Rather Be Watched By: China or the U.S.?</a></h2>
<p> <span class="authors"><a href="/conversation/whod-you-rather-be-watched-china-or-us" rel="nofollow">Tai Ming Cheung, Andrew J. Nathan & </a><a href="/conversation/whod-you-rather-be-watched-china-or-us" rel="nofollow">more</a></span><br /></p><div class="inner-content">
<p>Reports of U.S. gathering data on emails and phone calls have stoked fears of an over-reaching government spying on its citizens. Chinese artist Ai Weiwei worries that China will use the U.S. as an example to bolster its argument for surveillance on dissidents. After all, both...</p>
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<p>While there are certainly merits to this idea, China has yet to argue convincingly how such a multilateral approach improves upon the current multi-stakeholder model. Unsurprisingly, it also hasn’t addressed the risk such a scheme poses for citizens of non-democratic governments. Nevertheless, China’s emphasis on the principle of cyber-sovereignty appears to have become a central part of its international engagement—one we will likely see more of in the coming years. Ultimately, this will pose a challenge to the democratic Internet as a platform for many of the values Westerners long have viewed as universal.</p>
<h3>What Cyber-Sovereignty Means for Global Technology</h3>
<p>While China’s cyber-sovereignty push poses challenges for global Internet governance, it also may conceal something of a silver lining for global technology firms wishing to operate in China. The consolidation of Internet rulemaking in bodies such as the Central Leading Group for Cyberspace Affairs and the SIIO, represents a fundamental change from China’s previous patchwork online governance, suggesting that Internet regulations soon will be developed in a more coordinated manner. Further, the positioning of these organs near the apex of China’s leadership hierarchy means China’s top leaders will be able to pursue fundamental reform of national Internet regulations in line with those principles that they view as most essential to China’s future development.</p>
<p>Recent activity indicates that top officials are comfortable with furthering market openings provided they meet the two conditions of cyber-sovereignty. First, imported investment or products must not pose a threat to China’s cybersecurity (hence the recent regulation requiring security checks on IT products delivered to Chinese banks); and, second, global technology companies must adhere strictly to Chinese laws and regulations. They may not, for instance, employ VPNs that weaken the the firewall.</p>
<p>Several recent legislative developments suggest that Chinese leaders are in the process of opening the domestic market:</p>
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<p>Chinese officials already loosened certain Internet restrictions in the newly-established Shanghai Free Trade Zone, which now <a href="https://www.techinasia.com/china-wholly-foreignowned-ecommerce-companies-shanghai-free-trade-zone/" rel="nofollow">allows</a> wholly foreign-owned enterprises to operate nationwide e-commerce businesses from within the zone. To date, <a href="http://www.ibtimes.com/amazoncom-inc-amzn-kindle-proves-moderate-success-chinas-crowded-electronics-market-1511742" rel="nofollow">Amazon</a> has been the most high-profile foreign technology firm to set up operations there. As the Shanghai Free Trade Zone is intended as a testing ground for national reforms, its relatively relaxed treatment of foreign investment in general, and ecommerce in particular, suggests further national liberalization.</p>
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<p>In November 2014, China’s National Development and Reform Commission solicited public opinion on a draft revision of China’s Catalogue of Industries for Foreign Investment, the list that says where overseas money will be welcomed and where it will be rebuffed. Replicating the aforementioned reforms of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, the <a href="http://www.mayerbrown.com/files/Publication/b58ee37c-f0d0-4a5c-a59a-3eb14f490fb0/Presentation/PublicationAttachment/08afcef6-5981-4a84-9969-470e14d21fcf/141117-ASI-NDRC-ForeignInvestment.pdf" rel="nofollow">draft would</a>, if promulgated in its present form, remove the present 50% cap on foreign ownership of e-commerce businesses nationwide. The drafted revisions to the Catalogue also place venture capital on its “encouraged industries” list.</p>
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<p>In late January 2015, the Ministry of Commerce <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/china-looking-to-ease-foreign-investment-rules-on-internet-companies-1421868551" rel="nofollow">issued</a> a draft Foreign Investment Law that would likely stop future use of the Variable Interest Entity (VIE) structure under which many overseas and domestic investors long have skirted China’s traditional restrictions on non-Chinese ownership of online businesses (VIEs presently in existence would be grandfathered in). Such a move seems at first to be a further crackdown on foreign market entry, but, seen in the context of China’s cyber-sovereignty push, it could also signal that China is preparing to liberalize its licensing of joint-venture Internet companies—companies operating online businesses that require a local partner—by ensuring that no loopholes exist for overseas technology firms to work around existing equity and control requirements.</p>
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</ul><p>In addition to these regulatory developments, comments from China’s officials and state media indicate that they already may view overseas investment into China’s Internet market as inevitable. In an op-ed published in the Huffington Post, entitled “<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lu-wei/china-cyber-sovereignty_b_6324060.html" rel="nofollow">Cyber Sovereignty Must Rule Global Internet</a>” China’s cyberspace czar Lu Wei alluded to the core conception of cyber-sovereignty in comments suggesting that overseas firms would be permitted to do business in China provided they obeyed Chinese law:</p>
<blockquote><p>U.S. companies operating in China show that those who respect the Chinese law can seize the opportunity of China’s Internet innovation and create immense value, while those who chose opposition will be isolated by themselves and finally abandoned by the Chinese market.</p></blockquote>
<p>This theme was picked up in a <a href="http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/896948.shtml" rel="nofollow">recent op-ed</a> in the government-run newspaper <em>Global Times</em>: “… we can be sure that US Internet giants such as Google will not stay away from the Chinese market forever. We think the Firewall is a stopgap arrangement, whose function will diminish as Chinese cyberspace becomes more developed.”</p>
<p>These comments, directed at an international audience, support China’s fundamental principle of cyber-sovereignty and hint at a wider opening to foreign tech firms once China has perfected its legal framework for Internet business ownership. The ability of companies such as Amazon, LinkedIn, and Evernote to do business in China provides further support for the idea that global technology firms can serve Chinese consumers provided they operate in strict compliance with Chinese laws and regulations. Officials in Beijing certainly are not blind to the benefits such companies can bring China’s citizens.</p>
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<h3><a href="/reporting-opinion/media" rel="nofollow">Media</a></h3>
<p> <span class="date">03.21.14</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon4.gif" /></span></p></div>
<div class="cb-link"><a href="/we-know-it-when-we-there" rel="nofollow"></a></div>
<div class="cb-img"><a href="/we-know-it-when-we-there" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/5168.jpg?itok=4NGt6GUJ" alt="" /></a></div>
<div class="cb-cont">
<h2><a href="/we-know-it-when-we-there" rel="nofollow">“We’ll Know It When We’re There”</a></h2>
<p> <span class="authors"><a href="/we-know-it-when-we-there" rel="nofollow">Jonathan Landreth</a></span><br /></p><div class="inner-content">
<p>Martin Johnson (not his real name), is a co-founder of the China-based Internet freedom advocacy collective GreatFire.org. On the condition that he not be photographed, he gave the following interview to ChinaFile at an outdoor cafe in Manhattan.Jonathan Landreth: You've...</p>
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<p>To be sure, any further openings to foreign technology firms will not immediately end the challenges global firms face in China. Following the Snowden revelations, we can expect China to continue to exercise increased scrutiny over products from the world’s largest technology companies, in particularly those providers of backbone network hardware. Foreign companies must also cope with the persisting vagueness of China’s still-developing rule of law and the substantial discretion afforded administrative authorities to interpret that law in an ad hoc manner. But with China’s own technology capability growing at a phenomenal rate, we can take comfort that China has a shared interest in ensuring open communication and trade in the sector, and it seems likely that smaller technology firms in the U.S. and elsewhere may be willing to follow China’s cyber-sovereignty principles and design content and services that adhere to Chinese law, potentially heralding a new era of foreign investment in China’s Internet. Silver linings in dark clouds often disappear, but global technology firms able to wait out the stormy formation of China’s new Internet policy may, in the end, see some rain.<span class="cube"></span></p>
Thursday, February 19, 2015 - 10:00pmChinaFileIs Chinese Corporate Behavior Improving in Africa?http://www.chinafile.com/node/13341
<p>The list of grievances against Chinese companies operating in Africa is long and varied, from <a href="http://www.mining.com/south-african-report-highlights-chinese-labor-abuses-in-zimbabwe-and-zambia-80476/" target="_blank">violations of labor rights</a> to <a href="https://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/5270-Chinese-companies-using-illegal-permits-for-large-scale-logging-in-the-Congo" target="_blank">environmental destruction</a> to <a href="http://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/50/5034778_-africa-drc-china-evidence-of-corruption-in-6-bil-sicomines.html" target="_blank">widespread allegations of corruption</a>. Although it is hard to tell how many companies are truly guilty of poor corporate citizenship, the perception of bad behavior is nonetheless widespread. However, that may be starting to change, says Witney Schneidman, a Brookings Institution fellow and a former Africa policy-maker for the U.S. State Department. In a December 2014 <a href="http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/africa-in-focus/posts/2014/12/18-chinese-companies-investment-africa-schneidman" target="_blank">blog post</a> on the Brookings website, Schneidman contends that there is a growing awareness in Beijing of the need for Chinese corporate behavior to evolve beyond the current loan-fueled rush to grab market share and natural resources. Schneidman joins Eric & Cobus to discuss his views on the new, emerging era of improving Chinese corporate behavior in Africa.<span class="cube"></span></p><h3>Recommendations</h3><ul><li>“<a href="http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/africa-in-focus/posts/2014/12/18-chinese-companies-investment-africa-schneidman" target="_blank">Are Chinese Companies Retooling in Africa?</a>,” Witney Schneidman, Brookings Institution blog, December 18, 2014</li><li>“<a href="http://www.academia.edu/1242455/China_s_Growing_Involvement_in_Chad_Escaping_Enclosure" target="_blank">China’s Growing Involvement in Chad: Escaping Enclosure?</a>” Romain Dittgen & Daniel Large, South African Institute of International Affairs, May 2012</li></ul><p align="right"><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-china-in-africa-podcast/id484409506?mt=2&uo=4" target="itunes_store"><img src="http://linkmaker.itunes.apple.com/htmlResources/assets/en_us//images/web/linkmaker/badge_subscribe-lrg.svg" alt=""></a></p>Thursday, February 19, 2015 - 8:28pmChinaFileWhy 700 Million People Keep Watching the Chinese New Year Gala, Even Though It’s Terriblehttp://www.chinafile.com/node/13326
<p>The Chinese New Year Gala, which aired live on February 18 on Chinese Central Television (CCTV), is a four-and-half hour variety show with song and dance, comedic skits, magic tricks, acrobatic acts, and celebrity cameos. The show celebrates the Lunar New Year, also known as Spring Festival, the country’s most important family holiday. Every year at this time, hundreds of millions of people will make a total of 3.6 billion <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/chinese-new-year-2015-chunyun-largest-annual-human-migration-world-1488516" target="_blank">trips</a>—the world’s largest annual human migration—to crowd together on sofas with their family members, eat dumplings, and watch the New Year Gala. In 2014, an <a href="http://www.zj.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2014-02/02/c_119203389.htm" target="_blank">estimated</a> 704 million people watched the show live—and that was considered a bad year for ratings.</p><p><div class="cboxes article wide2 grid-4 img-yes logo-no"><div class="cb-head"> <h3><a href="/reporting-opinion/media">Media</a></h3> <span class="date">02.10.15</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon4.gif"></span></div><div class="cb-link"><a href="/reporting-opinion/media/chinese-corruption-now-officially-hilarious"></a></div><div class="cb-img"><a href="/reporting-opinion/media/chinese-corruption-now-officially-hilarious"><img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/20120122_zaf_x99_169.jpg?itok=DQ-t_WM2" alt="" /></a></div><div class="cb-cont"> <h2><a href="/reporting-opinion/media/chinese-corruption-now-officially-hilarious">Chinese Corruption, Now Officially Hilarious</a></h2> <span class="authors"><a href="/reporting-opinion/media/chinese-corruption-now-officially-hilarious">Rachel Lu</a></span> <div class="inner-content"> <p>Corruption is finally funny—at least, according to the Chinese Communist Party. That’s because comedic performances in the upcoming February 18 performance of China’s annual New Year Gala, a variety show on China Central Television (CCTV) expected to be watched by some 700...</p> </div> </div></div></p><p>People who see the Gala for the first time, or the 32nd time since its debut in 1983, probably find it glitzy, over-the-top, and schizophrenic in its attempt to try to be all things to all people. Acts intended to appeal to different demographics—Chinese opera for the elderly, street dancing for the youngsters, military songs for the soldiers—are <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/02/01/red-carpet-follies/" target="_blank">mashed up</a> against each other with the narrative fluency of a high school talent show.</p><p>But the Gala is not meant for clear-eyed analytical viewing. Most Chinese families keep it on as they polish off endless plates of greasy holiday fare, gulp down rice wine, and mindlessly snack on candy, peanuts, and sunflower seeds. The show essentially serves as background noise while people go on their holiday business of gossiping, playing mahjong, fielding phone calls from well-wishers, and keeping sugar-fueled children out of trouble, all the while listening to firecrackers pop outside in the wintry air.</p><p></p><p>Even if only a fraction of the hundreds of millions of viewers were paying attention, though, the Gala still offers one of the best chances for the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to present the image of China as a prosperous and harmonious nation. The amount of stage management that goes into the Gala is astonishing—each year a special CCTV team <a href="http://www.hinews.cn/news/system/2015/02/10/017316762.shtml" target="_blank">spends</a> three to six months planning the show and staging several dress rehearsals for the show’s <a href="http://ent.china.com.cn/2013-01/21/content_27746229.htm" target="_blank">thousands</a> of participants, with the last serving as a backup tape in case the live broadcasting goes awry. CCTV directors and Party officials from several agencies must approve every spoken line and lyric.</p><p>As a result, the Gala is entertainment by committee at its worst.</p><p>But while it is easy to see the television extravaganza as propaganda that airbrushes darker realities underlying Chinese society, the show is also complex and revealing. Below are five surprising findings from this year’s Gala.</p><p><strong>Chinese ethnic minorities were awarded a stronger showing.</strong> Against the backdrop of rising tensions and religious restrictions in Xinjiang, a region in northwest China where more than 10 million Muslim Uighurs live, this year’s Gala attempted to paint a picture of ethnic harmony. Negmat Rahman, a 31-year-old Uighur man who already hosts popular quiz shows on CCTV, <a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1699895/chinese-state-tv-taps-uygur-star-host-new-year-gala" target="_blank">was</a> the first recognizable minority to be one of the Gala’s eight hosts. (One of Rahman’s co-hosts, Sa Beining, is an ethnic Hui, a Muslim ethnic minority usually indistinguishable from the majority Han.) A Uighur woman named Rihanguli Yimier, wearing traditional garb (but not a headscarf), was designated a “model citizen” and chosen to deliver holiday greetings in her accented Mandarin.</p><p>Such tokenisms aside, the Gala does embody a cultural melting pot ideal in less visible ways. Ha Wen, an ethnic Hui, has for the past three years served as the show’s Chief Director, and is one of the most powerful women in Chinese showbiz. Her husband, Li Yong, a well-known CCTV personality and frequent Gala host, is a Xinjiang-born member of the majority Han ethnicity, and a convert to Islam. They <a href="http://media.people.com.cn/GB/36148/4321830.html" target="_blank">named</a> their daughter Fatima Li—a highly unusual name in China—as an assertion of their religious and ethnic identity.</p><p><strong>Anti-corruption satire is now officially hilarious.</strong> Censors made a 180-degree turn this year when they <a href="/node/13161" target="_blank">commissioned</a> two comedic skits to address the issue of corruption among the official ranks, whereas in previous years they studiously made sure that such material was scrubbed from the Gala. It’s a sign that President Xi Jinping’s government, which has instigated a sweeping anti-graft campaign, is determined to reap propaganda value from the carnage of corrupt cadres. One of the skits was quite sharp, mocking officials for sleeping around and kissing up to superiors, but the other barely mentioned official corruption, centering instead on bribing a school principal. In any case, the irony of Party-ordered political satire doesn’t sit right with many observers. When Cao Lin, a reporter with the state-run <em>China Youth Daily</em> <a href="http://weibo.com/5044281310/C4HdT7Unl" target="_blank">wondered</a> if having anti-corruption skits in the Gala meant more openness in state media, most commentators disparaged this notion. “It’s truly scary that the government is controlling the art of satire and exact extent of criticism,” one social media commentator <a href="http://weibo.com/5044281310/C4HdT7Unl" target="_blank">wrote</a>.</p><p><strong>Hong Kong made a conspicuous appearance.</strong> After more than two months of street protests in late 2014 that pitted pro-democracy Hong Kongers against pro-Beijing authorities, Gala planners seemed eager to emphasize Hong Kong’s membership in the big harmonious Chinese family. The presence of Hong Kong performers this year was hard to miss. Well-known celebrities Andy Lau and Karen Mok delivered solos, but more surprising was the precious screen time devoted to two newcomers in their 20s. The show featured Gloria Tang, also known as G.E.M., who <a href="http://www.chinatopix.com/articles/1469/20140317/gem-tang-fourth-championship.htm" target="_blank">wowed</a> Chinese fans in a 2014 reality singing show, and Zhou Jiahong, a young (and lackluster) magician who hails from Hong Kong. CCTV likely arranged their appearances to make sure that mainland audiences did not feel too alienated from their Hong Kong “<a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1110109/wen-jiabao-misses-his-compatriots-hong-kong" target="_blank">compatriots</a>” after the Occupy Central movement that many in China <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/10/02/in-china-shrugs-and-sneers-for-hong-kong-protesters/" target="_blank">believe</a> to be a manifestation of anti-mainland impulses of Hong Kongers, particularly among the younger generation.</p><p><strong>The generation gap played a starring role.</strong> The biggest controversy ahead of the Gala was the February 17 <a href="http://english.cri.cn/12394/2015/02/17/3521s866843.htm" target="_blank">cancellation</a> of the planned appearances of wildly popular young heartthrobs Luhan and Kris Wu, <a href="http://udn.com/news/story/7264/709698-%E8%A8%B4%E8%A8%9F%E7%BA%8F%E8%BA%AB%20%E9%B9%BF%E6%99%97%E6%98%A5%E6%99%9A%E8%A1%A8%E6%BC%94%E8%85%B0%E6%96%AC" target="_blank">allegedly due</a> to legal troubles with their management company. Millions of Chinese fans, usually in their teens or early 20s, greeted the sudden cancellation with a collective groan. The singers’ scheduled Gala appearance had seemed a stamp of approval to the boys, who win over youthful audiences but, not unlike Justin Bieber, irritate the older generation.</p><p>CCTV directors have tried to reach out to the smartphone-toting younger generation, but institutional inertia has so far kept the Gala staid and rigid. Private endeavors to attract younger audiences seem more promising, though. The Chinese video site iQiyi introduced a “<a href="http://www.iqiyi.com/zongyi/2015yscw.html?vfm=m_144_bdal" target="_blank">barrage</a>” technology that became popular with the younger set in 2014—in which users type comments directly onto their laptops, joining hundreds of other (mostly negative) comments scrolling down the screen like credits.</p><p><strong>But Gala critics still miss the point.</strong> Cynics assail the Gala as nationalistic, excessive, disingenuous, cheesy, and even, as Reuters <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/01/22/us-china-tv-gala-idUSTRE50L0RF20090122" target="_blank">deemed</a> it in 2009, a “propaganda party.” And they’re not wrong. But what most critics miss is that, for all its faults, the Gala is a nationally shared experience. In spite of the show’s often glaring faults, no other cultural event serves as such rich fodder for water cooler conversation after Chinese families return to the office after Spring Festival. For millions of Chinese, watching the Gala is inseparably entwined with fond memories of going home, seeing family, and being in the festival spirit. Whether the audience actually finds each individual act entertaining is beside the point. Without this loud and colorful spectacle, a Chinese New Year’s Eve would simply seem too quiet.<span class="cube"></span></p>Thursday, February 19, 2015 - 10:29amChinaFileChinese Studies at the University of Botswanahttp://www.chinafile.com/node/13046
<p>It’s long been said that while China may have an Africa policy, Africans do not have a China policy. In particular, too many Africans do not understand the language, culture, and politics of their new number one trading partner. The University of Botswana, for its part, is trying to change that. UB has one of the most ambitious Chinese studies programs in Africa. Dr. Frank Youngman helped establish the Chinese undergraduate and graduate studies programs at UB and joins Eric and Cobus to discuss the curricula and the difficulties the university is having in growing its Chinese studies department.<span class="cube"></span></p><h3>Recommendations</h3><ul><li>“<a href="http://www.slideshare.net/eolander/137-2371pb" target="_blank">Engaging Academically with China in Africa – The Institutional Approach of the University of Botswana</a>,” Frank Youngman, <em>African East-Asian Affairs</em>, September 2014</li><li>“<a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1677976/swedish-university-severs-ties-confucius-institute?page=all" target="_blank">Swedish University Severs Ties with Confucius Institute</a>,” Laura Zhou, <em>South China Morning Post</em>, January 9, 2015</li></ul><p><div class="cboxes article wide2 grid-4 img-yes logo-no"><div class="cb-head"> <h3><a href="/conversation">Conversation</a></h3> <span class="date">06.23.14</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon4.gif"></span></div><div class="cb-link"><a href="/conversation/debate-over-confucius-institutes"></a></div><div class="cb-img"><a href="/conversation/debate-over-confucius-institutes"><img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/77074056.jpg?itok=YSP1EE5U" alt="" /></a></div><div class="cb-cont"> <h2><a href="/conversation/debate-over-confucius-institutes">The Debate Over Confucius Institutes</a></h2> <span class="authors"><a href="/conversation/debate-over-confucius-institutes">Robert Kapp, Jeffrey Wasserstrom & <a href="/conversation/debate-over-confucius-institutes">more</a></a></span> <div class="inner-content"> <p>Last week, the American Association of University Professors joined a growing chorus of voices&nbsp;calling on North American universities to rethink their relationship with Confucius Institutes, the state-sponsored Chinese-language programs whose policies critics say are...</p> </div> </div></div></p><p align="right"><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-china-in-africa-podcast/id484409506?mt=2&uo=4" target="itunes_store"><img src="http://linkmaker.itunes.apple.com/htmlResources/assets/en_us//images/web/linkmaker/badge_subscribe-lrg.svg" alt=""></a></p>Wednesday, February 18, 2015 - 10:58pmChinaFileCai Guo-Qiang’s Love Affair With Fireworkshttp://www.chinafile.com/node/13281
<p class="dropcap">New York City-based artist Cai Guo-Qiang, one of the most celebrated contemporary artists born in China, has become the Godfather of a spectacular new kind of fireworks displays which he calls “explosion events.” Having done large-scale events around the world, from Beijing and Buenos Aires to Doha and Hiroshima, he has taken “gunpowder,” one of China’s “four ancient inventions” (printing, paper, the compass, and gunpowder) and pioneered a new epic form of art that is both material and metaphoric.</p><p>“Why is it important to make these violent explosions beautiful?” he asks. “Because the artist, like an alchemist, has the ability to transform certain energies, using poison against poison, using dirt and getting gold.” For Cai, the challenge is to take a force that historically has been viewed as destructive and transmogrify it into one that has curative artistic properties and is constructive. Cai explains that one reason he started working with fireworks was that he wanted “to open a dialogue with the universe,” jokingly suggesting that the real audience demographic he sought was not mortals here on earth, but “extra-terrestrials” in outer space.</p><p><div class="cboxes photo_gallery_slideshow wide2 grid-4 img-yes logo-no"><div class="cb-head"> <h3><a href="/multimedia/photo-gallery">Photo Gallery</a></h3> <span class="date">10.03.14</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon1.gif"></span></div><div class="cb-link"><a href="/multimedia/photo-gallery/silent-spring-huangpu-river"></a></div><div class="cb-img"><a href="/multimedia/photo-gallery/silent-spring-huangpu-river"><img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/gallery/system/01-93545767_10.png?itok=wYCdFlub" alt="" /></a></div><div class="cb-cont"> <h2><a href="/multimedia/photo-gallery/silent-spring-huangpu-river">Silent Spring on the Huangpu River</a></h2> <span class="authors"><a href="/multimedia/photo-gallery/silent-spring-huangpu-river"></a></span> <div class="inner-content"> <p>This past July, Shanghai’s Huangpu River—known for more than a few incidents involving dead floating pigs—played host to artist Cai Guo-Qiang’s ark-like menagerie of decrepit animals, “The Ninth Wave.” The vessel was destined for the Power Station of Art, a renovated...</p> </div> </div></div></p><p>Having grown up as a child in the coastal city of Quanzhou in Fujian province, just across the Straits from Taiwan, Cai became accustomed to hearing explosions as Mainland artillery batteries traded fire with Nationalist batteries on Kinmen and Madzu, two offshore islands then under the control of Chiang Kai-shek’s Government. But, it was only after he went to Japan and became interested in science that he found the opening, as he describes it, to a “window between the mystical, metaphorical, metaphysical concepts of Taoism—the infinity of mind within us and that of the physical universe whose seemingly infinite dimensions outside us were being mapped by astrophysicists.” Indeed, it was in pondering the Big Bang that Cai began to see that every molecule of existence actually found its common origin in this moment of creation. It was also while studying in Japan that he became aware of the terrifyingly destructive forces of physics that had been released through nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.</p><p>But if Cai’s fascination with pyrotechnics had roots in weaponry and physics, over time they also evolved to have a curious affinity with traditional Chinese brush painting. While at first these two mediums seem utterly dissimilar, Cai’s daytime “explosion events,” such as the one recently launched on the Huangpu River in Shanghai in front of the Power Station of Art to mark the opening of his solo exhibit, “The Ninth Wave,” suggest haunting similarities with classical brush painting. Involving organic vegetable dyes rather than just gunpowder, the smoke from these “explosion events” slowly blurs in the air much the way ink from a brush stroke is absorbed by rice paper in traditional painting. Thus, Cai’s unique brand of daylight skywriting bespeaks at once of his deep traditionalism and his modernism.</p><p>Here, as China welcomes in the Year of the Ram, ChinaFile presents in celebration four of Cai Guo-Qiang’s most iconic firework displays. They include the grand spectacle he created for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games, the 2014 event in Shanghai before his own solo show, his 2015 welcome for Beijing APEC Summit delegates, and his 2015 Buenos Aires “Tango Fireworks.”</p><p><iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/118498675?color=dd2f26&byline=0&portrait=0" frameborder="0" height="349" width="620"></iframe></p><p><iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/103547331?color=dd2f26&byline=0&portrait=0" frameborder="0" height="349" width="620"></iframe></p><p><iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/114820174?color=dd2f26&byline=0&portrait=0" frameborder="0" height="349" width="620"></iframe></p><p><iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/52093873?color=dd2f26&byline=0&portrait=0" frameborder="0" height="349" width="620"></iframe></p>Wednesday, February 18, 2015 - 5:50pmChinaFileLetter to the Editor from ‘Mao Zedong’ http://www.chinafile.com/node/13276
<p>美国纽约《中参馆》：</p>
<p>今天天堂版《参考资料》载贵馆所编 “<a href="http://www.chinafile.com/conversation/mao-still-dead" rel="nofollow">毛还是死了的吗</a>？” 的笔谈摘译，内容很生动，又带原则性。我于一九七六年差点没死的问题，像你们现在这样讲法，过去还没有过，特别是马若德和小沈两个人很能看出问题，分析得很不错。汉人李固说“盛名之下，其实难副”，这两句，正是指我。</p>
<p>我收到马克思的请帖，已经三十九年了。天堂消息很灵通，每天参阅材料、情报，都是很有兴味的。看样子，我党经过多少错误路线的教育才逐步走上正轨，并且至今还有问题，即对内对外都有大国沙文主义，仍须加以克服。一九七零年我曾与美国友人斯诺说“你说中国怎么怎么好，我不赞成。两个东西在斗，一个进步的，一个落后的”。我对中国的进步不满意，历来不满意。当然，我也曾经说过，不是没有进步。三十几年前同现在比较，总进步一点吧，三十几年啊！</p>
<p>我和我的革命战友，包括仲勋同志在内，都是对“毛还是死了的吗？”一句中的“死”采取同样态度的。不过，我早已就这一“死”字而指出过，鉴于不同的历史情况和条件，死的意义有不同。像“替剥削人民和压迫人民的人去死”一句中的“死”字，它的意思不过是“死亡”而已，但这与我一九七一年让中国队前往日本去参加乒乓球比赛时所批示的“我队应去，并准备死几个人，不死更好”一句中的“死”字的含意完全不一样。这个道理，请你们予以注意。语言这东西，不是随便可以学好的，非下苦功不可。</p>
<p>死神面前，一律平等，我岂能例外？</p>
<p>毛泽东</p>
<p>二月十四日</p>
Tuesday, February 17, 2015 - 12:11pmChinaFileProsperity, International Cooperation, Civil Rights Key to Defeating Terrorhttp://www.chinafile.com/node/13271
<p>The global fight against terrorism has entered a new stage with the emergence of the Islamic State (IS), and the battle lines have never been so clearly drawn all over the world.</p><p>On February 18, Washington will host the <a href="http://time.com/3711338/white-house-terrorism/" target="_blank">Summit on Countering Violent Extremism</a>, and Chinese delegates will join in the conversation.</p><p>Over the past year, developed countries including Canada and Australia have fallen victim to terrorist crimes. In early January, a bloody attack on the French satirical magazine <a href="/node/12346"><em>Charlie Hebdo</em></a> shocked the world.</p><p><div class="cboxes article wide2 grid-4 img-yes logo-no"><div class="cb-head"> <h3><a href="/conversation">Conversation</a></h3> <span class="date">01.16.15</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon4.gif"></span></div><div class="cb-link"><a href="/conversation/why-did-west-weep-paris-not-kunming"></a></div><div class="cb-img"><a href="/conversation/why-did-west-weep-paris-not-kunming"><img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/461279862.jpg?itok=nVjP4owa" alt="" /></a></div><div class="cb-cont"> <h2><a href="/conversation/why-did-west-weep-paris-not-kunming">Why Did The West Weep for Paris But Not for Kunming?</a></h2> <span class="authors"><a href="/conversation/why-did-west-weep-paris-not-kunming">Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian, Taisu Zhang & <a href="/conversation/why-did-west-weep-paris-not-kunming">more</a></a></span> <div class="inner-content"> <p>In the days since the attacks that killed 12 people at the offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris, Chinese netizens have watched the outpouring of solidarity. As our colleagues at Foreign Policy reported earlier this week, the Chinese reaction has been...</p> </div> </div></div></p><p>The IS group, originally a jihadist rebel group in Iraq, has swept across vast territories in Iraq and Syria, making its name as the world's most notorious terrorist group. It has an extremist ideology and uses extreme violence. Its goal is to establish a caliphate spanning as far as the eastern bank of the Mediterranean.</p><p>This is not just al-Qaida with a more violent twist. Ever since Osama bin Laden, who founded Al Qaida, was shot dead in 2011, Islamist extremist forces have been shifting their targets from the United States and other developed countries to secular regimes in the Arab world. The inner part of the Arab world has become the major stage for the recent display of terrorist conflicts.</p><p>As a newly emerged Islamist terrorist group, the primary goal of IS is to establish a caliphate in the Arab world, but its actions will carry spillover effects that cannot be neglected. Many extremist groups and individuals in other countries have been drawn to its training camps in the Middle East and North Africa. More than 20,000 self-proclaimed jihadists from over 90 countries and regions have volunteered to train in IS-controlled areas, where they are taught violent tactics and extremist doctrines. When they return home, their countries may suffer a new wave of attacks.</p><p><div class="cboxes article wide2 grid-4 img-yes logo-no"><div class="cb-head"> <h3><a href="/reporting-opinion/caixin-media">Caixin Media</a></h3> <span class="date">03.03.14</span> <span class="icon-type"><img src="/sites/all/themes/chinafile/images/icon4.gif"></span></div><div class="cb-link"><a href="/reporting-opinion/caixin-media/kunming-attack-chinas-911-state-media-says"></a></div><div class="cb-img"><a href="/reporting-opinion/caixin-media/kunming-attack-chinas-911-state-media-says"><img src="http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/article/system/revisedpic.jpg?itok=5m8bbIyt" alt="" /></a></div><div class="cb-cont"> <h2><a href="/reporting-opinion/caixin-media/kunming-attack-chinas-911-state-media-says">Kunming Attack Is ‘China’s 9/11,’ State Media Says</a></h2> <span class="authors"><a href="/reporting-opinion/caixin-media/kunming-attack-chinas-911-state-media-says"></a></span> <div class="inner-content"> <p>In the days after a major terror attack in Kunming, state media outlets are calling for a united front to combat terror and warning against excusing the attackers or criticizing the government’s policies on minorities.On the evening of March 1, a group of assailants armed with...</p> </div> </div></div></p><p>China's fight against terrorism needs to be viewed against this global background. The country's anti-terror campaign has its own uniqueness, but outside influence has become an increasingly significant factor. China is not a direct target of al-Qaida or IS, but it is not exempt from their spillover impact. Terrorist attacks by the Eastern Turkistan movement have escalated in recent years, causing incidents including one <a href="http://english.caixin.com/2013-10-28/100596425.html" target="_blank">in front of Tiananmen Square in 2013</a> and an exceedingly bloody one in <a href="/node/5144">Kunming in 2014</a>.</p><p>The government has taken a firm hand against terrorist activities, but this has not stopped them from repeatedly occurring in the Xinjiang region. The task faced by the country is similar to those of many others, but it also has its differences.</p><p>Chinese leaders have stressed that the country should "simultaneously push forward anti-terrorism work on both domestic and international fronts, and strengthen international cooperation on fighting terrorism." In 2014, the country held multiple anti-terror drills, some in cooperation with neighboring countries. It has used the meetings of multilateral organizations such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation as opportunities to reiterate its stance on terrorism and show its responsibility as a big country.</p><p>For years, China has disagreed with certain countries over the definitions of terror activities on its territory. Chinese authorities accuse those countries of "double standards." The United States and other developed countries, on the other hand, think China is not doing enough in terms of sharing information, collecting evidence, and verifying facts, an accusation China has denied. This dispute aside, it is worth learning from other countries' practices to promote anti-terrorism cooperation, as long as core national interests are protected. In addition, China should participate in the formation of a safety framework for the Middle East and Central Asia so the two areas can return to peace and stability.</p><p>Fighting terrorism should also follow rule of law. China does not have anti-terror legislation. The Internet has become a platform for terrorists to spread and fuel hatred and abet attacks, and many countries' governments, including China's, have made it a priority to monitor such activities. Working in areas like this requires the government to be patient and follow rules, striking a balance between national security and civil liberties.</p><p>The fight against terror also needs support from communities and the public. The summit in Washington will stress the importance of community power and encourage ordinary people and grassroots leaders, who know their communities best, to participate in the fight against violence and extremism. This is similar to China's strategy, which mobilizes local people to fight terrorism, including rewarding tipsters for information about suspected terrorist activity in Xinjiang. We urgently need to build strong communities with fair and equal social and economic opportunities while taking into consideration different ethnic and religious factors and social customs. A strong and vibrant community is the soil in which terrorism will never grow.</p><p>Last week, Chinese and American leaders discussed cybersecurity over the phone. They also agreed that President Xi Jinping will visit the United States in September. Meanwhile, the Central Leading Group on Financial and Economic Affairs has been briefed on the developments of setting up the <a href="/node/9476" target="_blank">Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank</a> and the Silk Road Fund. These events, seemingly unrelated, all have significant bearing on the country's anti-terror agenda. Only by building a prosperous economy, cementing international cooperation, and protecting civil rights can we deal a fatal blow to terrorism.<span class="cube"></span></p>Tuesday, February 17, 2015 - 9:03amChinaFile